One of the most difficult things about being a meditative artist is coming up with the next idea. Choosing tangles, choosing the right tangle enhancers, what shall I do next? During the last TangleU in Asheville, one of the most fun games I played with Art clubbers and other friends during studio time was the "prompt” game, where I gave participants a prompt to include in their projects at regular short intervals). Now I want to show you another tool that you can use on your own: the raffle bag.

This is nothing but a bag shock full of 2x2 inch bijou tiles with “prompts”. There are hundreds of these bijous in the bag, some have tangle patterns, (almost all the official Zentangle patterns are in there, thanks to the gorgeous tiny tile card deck from Lynn Mead), tangle enhancers, concepts I introduced in many of my lessons, and even some of the many ideas I have still waiting to become lessons.

I use them very similarly to the Art and Tangle card game (find more information here): I pull out a number of these bijous, and work on a project which includes the prompts. I usually pull out 12 of these prompts, but you may want to start with a little less to get acclimated. These are the ones that I pulled out yesterday:

Now let me warn you, the results of using the raffle game (or the card game) are many times unusual and bizarre. I am always surprised at the results! The combination of tangles and enhancers is not one that I would have chosen to begin with — but that's the WHOLE point of using the cards, right! Here is what I created with this combo:

WEIRD!!!! But it was super fun to try to make the various pieces fit into the drawing, and you can see that I managed to include all of my picks. Here is a close-up:

If you really don't feel like creating your own cards, then you can get the Art and Tangle card game, gorgeously “tarot” size cards printed with prompts and inspirational pictures: