I love taking beautiful colored tiles and tangling on them. Typically I use the YouTangle.art Tiles from Hahnemühle and on this particular day I took a handful and added beautiful color.

I end up with something like this. But how does it begin? How do I achieve the wonderful color mix that I can then tangle on?

Or even this one? Whether I tangle the whole tile or just a portion, for me it is all about the color. Let me show you what I did to make both of these tiles.

I began with two or three bottles of Jane Davenport’s Inkredible Inks for each tile. For this particular tile, I dropped the color straight onto the dry tile. You will notice the watermelon color just sat there for the most part. The limeade and the lemonade sherbet spread after I dropped the color on. Then I sprayed a little water on the yellow section to make the color spread even more. I elected to leave those watermelon spots alone. Where the lower one met the more wet yellow color, it began to feather a small bit. I liked the results and sat it aside to dry.

Jut kidding, as it dried the yellow and watermelon interacted and I liked the effect so I added a small bit more water and sat it aside. Again. Let me show it to you dry.

You can see the color kept spreading. This particular brand of tile is more absorbent than . . . say the original Zentangle tiles. And when working with color – for me – this is a win/win situation all around. I love this color! Look at the limeade section and what it did! Isn’t that awesome?

For day 40 of The 100 Day Project I used this tile to add some loop screen tangles. You can see a step out and explanation for this pattern right here.

For this next Inkredible Ink tile I used the limeade and lemonade colors again and added some mermaid tail. I used the dropper to put color directly on my craft mat, then I sprayed the whole area with a bit of water. You’ll notice the water makes the puddles bigger, but it also adds some nice dotted textured areas as well . . .

. . . which you can see here. I turned the tile face down into the color and tapped it down with my fingertips. I loved this just as it was so I seriously didn’t do anything else. I just placed it onto my drying surface and waited. Well, I made more tiles but with other product. Hahahahaha!

And here is this tile after it dried. I love it! And it totally brought underwater imaging to mind.

Not your typical underwater patterns but who cares. Hahahaha! What works, works. For day 33, I tangled up some actinar and my swing and I love it so much! For both of these tiles I used Zensations Technical Drawing Pens from Zebra Pen to create the tangles. Zebra and Hahnemühle is a pretty much unbeatable combination!

Another liquid watercolor I’ve been working with is Avery Elle. I do love these colors. Softer than the Inkredibles. You may be wondering why I have a bottle of green color in this photo. Actually the color is lemon grass and it looks more yellow than green. I also used cherry. Just two colors that I put on the craft mat and then turned the tile face down into. No water added. Just the Avery Elle.

And here it is dry. Not tangled yet, but there are 51 days left in this challenge. And I’m only a few days behind. Hahahahaha!

Here’s more of that cherry mixed with some aquamarine. I put the color directly onto the tile, then immediately spritzed some water onto it so the colors would move a bit.

This one lightened up a decent amount as it dried and I like it this way. Reminds me of cotton candy! Or bubblegum ice cream at Coldstone. Hahahaha!

And the last one I worked on with the Avery Elles. I used sugar plum – that really pretty purple color, a little fizz – that’s the orange, and that’s it. Seriously. I only used two colors on this tile. The purple starts at the top and works its way down. When I sprayed water on the purple, it pushed down and the color more or less separated into other colors. For lack of a better explanation. And splashed down on those two others areas where you see what looks like a green. Awesome sauce! I love the Avery Elles!

And here it is dry. I haven’t tangled these last three tiles yet but they are in the stack to be worked on. I like having several to pick from depending on my mood at the time. And when I have the time to actually sit down and draw. I’m working on a new book that is turning out to be a whole lot bigger project than I expected! I’ve already been workin on it for four months and don’t see an end in sight. But it will come and you will be among the first to know when it is released. And I know you will want it for yourself. At least I hope you will. Hahahahaha! Have a great day and a super week!

YouTangle.art Tiles and most things Hahnemühle with links for purchase
Zebra Pen, Zensations Technical Drawing Pens
Jane Davenport Inkredible Ink
Avery Elle Liquid Watercolor

ATC swapping is fun and it gives me something to do just for myself. I am not accountable to anyone when I work on these and it’s a nice change of pace. Pretty much every time I show you ATCs I worked on to trade – someone will ask me to show what I received in the swaps. Today’s post will show you two of those sets.

The ATCs I enjoyed making the most were for the Quirky Swap. The admins in ATC Trades and Jams on FB have some great ideas for swaps and this was surely one of their best. I traded with Indiana artist Tanya Phenis. I love what Tanya sent to me! We make two ATCs that fit the theme and I love what Tanya did with quirky! Especially the saying in the first one that goes so well with the background – especially since I used to be a professional photographer. Something Tanya wasn’t even aware of. Both are really cute!

I love the way she packaged the ATCs. Such an ingenious way! And when I pulled the first ATC out I could see the second.

Tanya even found a little tag with the word Quirky on it! Hahaha! Awesome!

Earlier I participated in a swap that required either a ribbon or a piece of metal be attached to the ATC coin. I should mention both of the swaps were for ATC coins. They are 2.5″ in diameter. I really like this one with the beautiful carousel horse and the shiny ribbons! These came from Canadian artist Carolyn Pullman.

And this one had more of a Caribbean night in the moonlight vibe. You gotta love that! Carolyn has been dealing with health issues with her mom. I’m just glad she has been able to find a little time for herself and her art. Thanks for swapping with me, Carolyn! I love what you sent!

If you are interested in swapping traditional ATCs or even the coins, head on over to FB and check out ATC Trades and Jams.

Ooh! Isn’t that pretty? Lately you have seen me playing with Brea Reese’s alcohol inks. And I liked them so much I ordered a few bottles of her watercolor inks to try out. I ordered four colors and those are what you will see in these three tiles. And for whatever reason Amazon sent them in four separate boxes. Hahahaha!

This shot will give you an idea of the size. I am using the YouTangle.art Tiles from Hahnemühle. That tin is roughly 3.5″ square. The colors I went with are ocean green, pink, orange and violet. They went all out on naming these things. Hahaha! And even though it looks like there is a noticeable difference between the orange and the pink – and there should be – I really had a hard time once the color was on the tiles remembering which was which. In my swatch book the two colors look identical except the orange has a little sparkle in it.

So they come like inks in a bottle. Not like watercolors in a tube or in a pan. I started by dropping a few drops of the pink – yes, you read the correctly – and the purple on the tile and let them blend a bit.

Then I sprayed a little water on the tile because I thought the purple was too dark and I hoped to lighten it up some. The water helped with that and it also helped the colors to move a bit more. So I set that tile aside to dry and moved on. I didn’t really like how you can see exactly where I dropped the color – those big dots of violet and “pink” and I was hoping they would soften as they dried. They did not.

I dropped some ocean green on my craft mat and sprayed some water over it. Remember in the first tile I worked straight on the tile itself. Here I wanted to try for a softer technique and worked on the mat first. And there was still a little of that pink because I didn’t clear the mat off first.

Tipped my tile down into the color and tapped it down.

And this was all the color it picked up. A little purple still hanging in there from run-off with the first tile. And I still can not believe that is pink and not orange. In the bottle it looks pinkish red. Weird.

I sprayed the tile with water and dropped in some purple and a bit of more of that pink. The added water let the ocean green move and soften up. These YouTangle.art tiles are fairly absorbent and soak up the color. They always dry nice and flat and that puffiness settles down and you do not have any of that once the tile is dry. I will show you in a minute. I set this tile aside to dry.

I still had this much mixed color on my craft mat.

So the obvious thing to do was to slap another tile down into the color. Hahahahahahah! Yep!

I liked it but I wanted the color to spread some so I lightly misted it with water.

And added some drops of ocean green and orange on the mat.

And turned my tile over into the color. Strange. It has ocean green, orange AND pink on it. I see one area where there is a little pale pink. Let me show you something.

This is my color swatch book. My place to keep all the colors I have so I don’t double purchase. Unless it’s Opera Pink and that’s ok. This dot. It just sat there. It didn’t move. at. all. I had to use a brush to spread it out in the square.

And here are the swatches of my four colors. Hahahaha! Crazy! So. The tiles were drying. And now they are finished. Let’s look!

Here is the first one I showed you. After the tile dried I can see a bit of pink. Remember the only colors I used on this one was violet and pink. So I was surprised to see bits of pink and orange and even a little yellow in places.

This is the second one I showed you. This one had ocean green, violet and pink. The colors softened up so much and I think it is because of the absorbent nature of the tiles. I really like the colors!

And this last tile was a combination of what was left on my mat and a little added ocean green and orange. I really like this one a lot! In fact, I think I have already tangled it as part of The 100 Day Project!

Overall I like the Brea Reese watercolor inks even though the colors – specifically the pink – are not true. As long as I play with them first and color swatch them I will have a more realistic expectation of what they will do when I use them. The YouTangle.art Tiles? What can I say. I just really like them a whole lot! And use them every single day pretty much!

Brea Reese Watercolor Inks
YouTangle.art Tiles and most things Hahnemühle and where to get them