petosky stones

  Here's my submission for Joey's weekly challenge:

Featuring Cruffle! There's also Beanz, Bales. Printemps, Tipple, and lots of auras.

  And Diva's challenge, too:

Petoskey stones that look like orange slices one moment, and flowers the next.

  Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week ahead.

radial blossoms

  I think I've finally gotten back into my work routine after coming back from my holiday in Bali. This week has been a little busy, so I took an off-day and just stayed home and planned for my Zentangle classes and doing some art.

  Here's my entry to Joey's challenge, featuring Merryweather.

  And my entry to the Diva challenge:

A quarter slice, in my sketchbook.

  And lastly, here's a sequence of tiles that I did as examples for one of my classes.

  If you haven't seen it already, I also uploaded a new Draw With Me video on my YouTube channel.

  If you'd like, you could also go see my entry to the UOB Painting of the Year competition. :) Thanks for stopping by. I'll see you again next week!

My Entry to UOB Painting of the Year Competition

  I joined the UOB Painting of the Year Competition this year. It's my first time entering it, and I decided to do a piece that showed tangles. My main idea was to have a girl surrounded by pastel colours and tangles. I knew that the pieces that would be submitted for the competition would be considerably large, so I decided to make my piece in a larger format. I found a frame that I thought was a good size then cut a large sheet of Fabriano paper to fit the frame. The art work ended up being 50cm by 70cm (19.6" by 27.5").

This was my sketch:

I inked the girl and the plants so that the camera would be able to capture what I drew. You can also see the light markings I did for the background segments.

    Then I added Winsor and Newton watercolours on the background. I stuck to blues, pinks, and purples.

  Making progress on the tangles...

  Tangles completed! Now onto shading! I used Tombow's dual brush markers.

  I also added details using a white Uni-ball Signo Broad pen, and the gold finish was added with Finetec paints.

  Moving onto the girl and the flowers, I used Derwent's Coloursoft coloured pencils, sticking to the colour scheme of pink, blue, purple.

  And finally, after three full days of working on this piece, I was done. I really do prefer the quicker gratification I receive when I work on a regular Zentangle® tile.

  Here are some detail shots:

  The results will be out this week. I'm excited. We'll see how it goes. Prize or not, I'm extremely proud of this art piece, and it's shown me how far I've come artistically in the past two years and what I can achieve.

happy birthday to...

  August was kind of crazy this year.

  From the 1st to the 9th, The Hubby and I went to Bali for a holiday. The 9th also happens to be Singapore's National Day. Our nation celebrates with a huge parade and lots of fireworks. Then on the 13th, it was one of my best friend's birthday. On the 16th it was my mother-in-law's birthday. On the 23rd, it's my mum's birthday. And we are finishing the month off with MY birthday. woohoo!

  Speaking of birthdays; it's Adele's It's A String Thing Weekly Challenges' fourth birthday. Here's my tile to celebrate:

Four candles, and Knightsbridge. It took me two tries to get the idea I had in mind correctly onto paper.

  And then aside from all of these birthday celebrations, I have begun to try to start new opportunities for Everything Is Art. I joined the UOB Painting of the Year competition. And I'm getting back into the swing of teaching in-person Zentangle classes. It's been wild.

  But I still have found time for other artsy things. Here's my tile for Joey's challenge: African Artist. This tile will eventually join eight other tiles to form one large Opus-sized art work. :) I'm excited.

One tile a week; nine tiles in nine weeks. It's going to look great. I can feel it.

  And lastly, here's my tile for Diva's Challenge: Fragment D1.

  I've made a little booklet for seven Bijous. And this is one of the tiles that will go into the booklet. I'm planning to turn it into a class. We'll see how it goes. ;)

  Want more inspiration? See what I did in my sketchbook in the past week in this blog post.

sketchbook thingies

  More pages from my sketchbook!

Here's the very first page in the book.

Something inspired by Michele Wynne.

Silhouette "s".

Here's a challenge I did. I rolled a dice and used whichever patterns corresponded to the number I rolled. To get a better idea on how that works, watch this video.

And here's a merging tangle page.

  If you'd like to see more of my art, click here for another post. Thanks for stopping by~

back-dated post

  For some reason, this post was hanging out in my draft box and was never posted. (Oops.) But in any case, I thought you'd like to see the nice things I created.

Flukes and Hamadox. Simple yet so elegant.

If you look closely on the bottom left side of the tile, you'd see that I had tried adding dots using a white pen but ended up not liking it...

  Luv-a and Diva Dance Waltz.

A variation of Shattuck and Florz, with a rainbow background done using Derwent's Coloursoft.

  This one is Bales with watercolours.

  And another with watercolours featuring Diva Dance Waltz with Paradox.

  Thanks for looking!

The Black and White Journal Course

  I've been working through my sketchbook using projects from the Black and White Journal course. Here's what I've done so far....

  We used the quote "Transcend the Limits" as inspiration for a page.

  We learnt how to carve stamps.

Look at my stained fingers! That's how you know you've had fun, eh?

  I didn't have black ink, but that's not too much of a matter. I just used what I had- blue and red. Here's a test page.

  And here are pages in my actual sketchbook.

  I wanted to use Apprentice tiles in my sketchbook, and I knew I wanted to add a coloured wash on them. I would usually reach for really bright colours, but because of the Black and White course, I decided to use shades of grey instead.

I cut them into circles and they ended up looking like moons!
So I stuck one of them into my sketchbook and wrote a moon quote below it.

  We also learnt how to do a mood mandala. Here's how mine turned out once completed.

  It all looks so fun, doesn't it? If you'd like to join in on the fun, you can find out more about the course via this link.

back from Bali

  I'm not one to take many pictures... So I don't have many to show. And I'm not a photographer, so even if I do try to take pictures (of a landscape, a sunset, a moment in time), they often don't capture the breathtaking beauty that I'm trying to keep... I do take pictures of the people I spend time with in order to remember the memories I make... And I highly recommend you do that, too, even if you don't like taking pictures of yourself. Because with time, our brains forget, people enter and leave our lives. And these photos you take will be the only few physical things you have left of your past experiences. 

  I did, however, keep a visual diary of what I did during my trip. And it turned out quite well. Even if it was very simple. 

  I stayed in Bali for nine days, as a well deserved break, and also as a traditional "your-honeymoon-has-to-be-spent-overseas", even if The Hubby and I spent a couple of days at The Warehouse Hotel immediately after we got married.

  Was nine days a long time to spend in Bali? Yes. Yes, it was.

  What we did in nine days could have been done in four/five days. But it was nice to have one day of activity and one day of rest. It was a very relaxed and chill holiday.

  We stayed in Airbnbs so that cost was kept low. We stayed in South Denpasar, which is really near the airport. And then on day five, we travelled to Ubud to stay till' the end of our stay.

  And here are the highlights of our holiday...

  On Day Three, we went to Kuta Beach and had cold beers. I picked up seashells, and The Hubby and I enjoyed a very pretty sunset together.

  On Day Six, we decided to make pit-stops before we went to our next home in Ubud. We visited Kenungan waterfall. 165 steps to see this view:

  Our driver explained that there used to be nothing at Kenungan waterfall, but a village moved in and banked in on tourists visiting the area. Now, there's a SGD $2 entrance fee to the waterfall, and plenty of people sell drinks and snacks, too. I'd say if you'd prefer a more quiet waterfall, skip this and visit some place else. The 165 steps back up was also no joke...

  After that, we visited Pod Origin. It was a wonderful experience. To start, we were given a shot of chocolate. Then we paid for a tour of the factory and the chance to make our own chocolates. A guide showed us how chocolate was harvested and processed... We were allowed to sample all of the flavours of chocolates that they sold... And we got to make our own chocolates. 

Waiting for the chocolates to cool? Let's take a selfie.

  You could also go for an elephant riding experience, but I questioned the ethics of it. I don't even go to Singapore's Aquarium because they keep dolphins.... The place also had a water rafting experience, but The Hubby doesn't know how to swim and has had a bad experience in the past with water rafting, so we skipped that, too.


  On Day Eight, we woke up a little earlier so that we could go for a hike along the Campuhan Ridge Walk. It's a lovely trail that is connected to Ubud's main street. The trail is paved, and the scenery is lovely.


  We then needed to eat, and The Hubby wanted to go to this grill place, but when we reached it, the staff said that they didn't open till' after 5pm. However, just across the road, we found a wonderful Greek restaurant called "Nostimo". We had our best meal for the whole trip at this restaurant. And they were so competitively priced.

Look at how nice the meal looks...

  On Day Nine, we visited the Water Palace in Ubud. On the left side of the Water Palace is a large warung, and on the right is a.... Starbucks. Who'd have though, eh? And on the outside of the Starbucks, there is a sitting area. It's not clearly marked so most people don't sit there (they'll sit inside the store). The outside doesn't have air-conditioning but it's so peaceful, and no one will bother you... We spent almost two hours just sitting there. It gave me some time to draw in my sketchbook and reflect back on the past nine days before we headed to the airport to take our flight back to Singapore.

  So now I'm back in Singapore and trying to collect my bearings. It's difficult to get back to work life after you've been on a long holiday, isn't it?

  But I'm glad to be back home in Singapore. And to be teaching classes, and doing art-sy things again. I'll be back to regular posting soon. :)

with love, Stephanie

  I received a request from one of my Zentangle friends to create art works/cards for someone who was going through cancer treatment. I decided to make a card with a quote of hope inside of it.

There's a tile in the card that is held in by transparent photo corners. The gemstone is a sticker.

  Onwards to other tiles... I tried my hand at illuminated letters. I'll actually be teaching classes on this technique this month. :)

  These next ones are all for Travelling Tangles.

This was from Lin Laidler, featuring Fracas. I added Hollibaugh, Flux, and Fe-Ba. It was great to go back to basic black-ink-on-a-square-tile.

  This next one was from Aleesha Sattva.

I saw a lotus in her start.

Tangles featured include: Diva Dance, Striping, and Printemps.
I used the stippling technique to add shading on the outside of the tangles. 

All shading was done using Tombow markers. And highlights were added using a Uni-Ball Signo Broad pen.

  And this last beauty was started by Lin Laider, too. It's a Bijou tile (1 inch square). Lin did the tiny Printemps and the Crescent Moons, I added Shattuck and Diva Dance Waltz.

  Thanks for looking!