Slow Stitching
Zentangle, Mandalas, Zendoodle, Labyrinth, Neurographica, what other types of meditative arts are out there? This week I discovered Slow Stitching. Apparently it’s a relatively new term (since around 2014) to describe intuitive, non-planned embroidery. You may not know this, but I’ve been in touch with fiber arts and embroidery very early on in life, taught by my grandmother. My skills are rusty at best, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process of adding bits of ribbon, fabric and even paper to form a small square patch, one stitch at a time.
This is the first one I made:
Here’s a “before and after”. Notice how I even stitched bits of paper on to a Zentangle tile:
Here’s a close-up of the finished one:
This is the second one I made, using ribbons and fabrics only. I like it, but I enjoyed the randomness of the first one a bit more.
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Remember that all images are Copyright Eni Oken.
Zentangle, Mandalas, Zendoodle, Labyrinth, Neurographica, what other types of meditative arts are out there? This week I discovered Slow Stitching. Apparently it’s a relatively new term (since around 2014) to describe intuitive, non-planned embroidery. You may not know this, but I’ve been in touch with fiber arts and embroidery very early on in life, taught by my grandmother. My skills are rusty at best, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process of adding bits of ribbon, fabric and even paper to form a small square patch, one stitch at a time.
Continuing my explorations shading with brown ink, I created this mandala measuring 7x7 inches using bits and pieces of tangles and fragments I like. I used my new wonderful printer to print out one of my templates over watercolor thick paper and tangled over it using a brown micron pen. Such fun! The entire thing took me two days, trying to not overdo it.
This week I tried something I’ve wanted to try for a long while: using one of my old pictures as a string. I printed a previous picture very lightly over thick watercolor paper and proceeded to tangle over it, using my new favorite shading technique with brown inks. The picture took several days to finish and I will confess that it was a little too large for my taste (tangled area measures 4.5x7 inches). That’s a LOT of tiny tangling! But I’m happy with the result.
Still playing with shading with brown inks. There are no watercolors here at all, only inks. This is challenging! This tile is from a CZT After Hours session conducted by Aimee Saccio - thank you! - with the beautiful LineLace tangle by Reyes Galindo.
I'm playing with several things lately: learning how to make popup cards, how to paint and shade using ink and watercolors, and how to use my new inkjet printer. Here I duplicated a balloon shape originally drawn with brown pen and inks, then printed out several pieces to collage on a V-fold pop-up card. The result is an explosion!!!
I participated in the 2024 Zentangle BeWell event. Instead of using triangular tiles, I created a white base pop-up card using almost exclusively triangular V-folds and added each tangle of the event every day. The main challenge of this project was to make something that would flatten out completely so that I can draw over it after the pop-up is constructed. Here’s the final piece!
Continuing my explorations shading with brown inks, some more successful than others. The main tile shown here was made during a CZT After Hours session with Patty Duffy - Thank you! A radial formation with a serrated Fescu which looks more like Drawings, and an Opus border.
After a looooong time, I finally updated our free app Art Raffle with new cards, including: Amanita and Appearance, Bramble and Boojum (all Sandra Strait), Imaritas (Debbie New), Bucky (3 different versions), Nayu (Emiko Kaneko), two versions of Sunbelt and WhattheWell (Jody Genovese), Oasis (Tomas Padros). Also included some enhancers such as Tucker (Zentangle) and Shaving Tangles (Margaret Bremner), some HQ tangles such as Raddox, Rumpus and Foundabout. Additionally two new tangles of my own: Skorpio and Varanda. Whew!
The beautiful Bailarine Popup Class is now available for individual purchase at my Teachable Video Shop. This is a 3 part series - 3 videos totaling 4:20 hours - showing how to understand and build a fantasy world pop-up card from scratch, using Zentangle Inspired elements. https://enioken.teachable.com
I’m still enjoying my explorations shading using only brown ink. This mandala is inspired by the tangles shown in Project Pack 23 (through day 9 only). It was a very interesting process to try to adapt whatever tangles came up each day into a complex mandala string which I had preprinted on 8x8 inch watercolor paper. It took me several days to complete, all shaded with sanguine FB Pitt brush pen. A lot of free adaptation required!