SoFishticated Zentangle

Hey crafty friends, it's Amanda with Pear Blossom Press again! Today, I've got a fun zentangle card for you. If you're not familiar with the term, let me explain. It's the art of doodling, or drawing tiny repetitive patterns within the lines of a bigger image or scene. For those of us who love to doodle, but wouldn't consider ourselves great artists, the Sofishticated stamp set is the perfect way to get started! It is full of gorgeous underwater creatures drawn in zentangle fashion. (And some great sentiments too.) You can use these images as focal points for your own zentangle scenes, like I did.

For this card, I started by stamping my images with black ink, then I used my stitched hillside dies as guides to draw in the wave lines around the images with a Copic liner. You can freehand that part, but I wanted to make sure my lines curved in the same places. Next, I filled in the waves with little doodles and patterns. (Don't be intimidated by this; think dots, scallops, Vs, swirls, and crosshatched lines. This is the fun part!)

Once the patterns were all filled in, I used Copic markers to color the waves and images. Then I glued the scene onto a blue A2 card base. For the sentiment, I stacked the die cut word, Congrats, several times and added a layer of copper embossing powder on top. I stamped the smaller sentiment onto a strip and embossed it with the same powder, then glued them in place. Details on the fish were added with white, gold, and copper gel pens. I try to save anything with a long dry time as the last thing I add to a card, so I'm less likely to smear it. So for my final touch, the fish and bubbles got some extra pizzazz with an Aqua Shimmer pen and a coat of Diamond Glaze (the most challenging of all things to photograph).

Are you a doodler? Have you tried any zentangle art yet? This card was a ton of fun to create, but I never would have given it a try without the Sofishticated stamp set to get me started. I have several more ideas for different scenes that I can't wait to try! I hope you'll give it a try too and let me know what you think.

If you'd like links to other specific products I used for this card, you can find them on the sister post here. I'll be back soon with another fun card. Until then my friend, thanks for swimming by and I'll SEA you soon!