Melanie Scraps!: Stretching those creative muscles

I love learning. Whether its a new technique, or how to use a new tool, or really anything! I just love learning about everything! So, as part of my challenge to myself this year, I am committed to learning something new every month and trying to incorporate that new knowledge into my creative ventures. This month, I joined an ATC swap at artfortytwo.org which challenged me to "zentangle" my new year's resolutions.

First, I went, "What the heck is zentangles?" Then I hit up Google images- and it is really cool! The only thing you really need is a white background and a black felt tipped marker. Then you just make repetitive designs as you feel- for my first one, I leaned heavily on Google images to give me ideas about patterns- but once I got the hang of it, I started to invent my own :)

It is really relaxing and I will definitely be employing this technique on my scrapbook pages- it IS time-consuming but it feels just like the doodling you would do if you were chatting on the phone (or half paying attention in class).

Here are my four ATC cards:

I was supposed to represent my resolutions in zentangle format- but I just couldn't get away from using words- so I tried to incorporate them as best as I could.