Okay so today has been totally awesome! I discovered that my very first tangle I created, Lazy Eights, was published today on TanglePatterns.com! How great is that!? I have received great feedback so far and became totally pumped up!

Then I became totally guilty. Yikes! I haven’t published anything in a couple of weeks and now I have new followers. Oh the shame!

Blame procrastination. Blame lack of responsibility. Blame life. However, in my defense, I was putting off working on this day’s challenge for a couple of reasons. Day Thirty Nine’s challenge was drawing texture on a unique medium – mica sheets. Mica is an iridescent mineral that can be found in paper-like sheets. However, Mica doesn’t grow on trees around these parts and I was not going to pay for shipping on something I would probably only use once.

That’s where the procrastination part of this challenge set in. No mica, no inspiration. I needed to actually use my brain outside of the office and come up with something creative to work around this challenge. Today was the motivator I needed to get out of my procrastination slump! So fresh off my publishing high, I headed for my little art room upstairs and set to work.

I re-looked at day thirty nine’s challenge and focused on the word “texture”. “Hell, I can create texture with some paints and tools I have lying around up here!”, I thought to myself. So out came my paints, gels and mat-boards. I cut small tile out of mat-board and then set adding acrylic gel medium liberally over the top of it. Since I am still pining for spring, I choose to add bright green and orange paints as my colors of choice. Since I was going for texture, I used “a lot” of paint. Once I was satisfied with the blending of the colors, and while wet, I took out my new embossing tool and scratched tangles right through the paint! I was careful to keep wiping the excess paint off my embossing tool as I went along. I choose very simple tangles like Flux, Mooka, and Shattuck.

The idea to scratch through the paint was inspired by the ceramic art technique of ‘Sgraffito’ I learned in college. The technique uses two contrasting tinted clay slip added in layers on an unfinished ceramic surface. When you scratch through the top layer of the tinted slip the second contrasting color comes through creating a textured design. In the case of my tile, I let the white be the contrasting color that popped through the paint. Here you can see from an angle the texture this technique creates.

I had great fun in creating this little tile and was glad to find a creative way to work through this day’s challenge. I think I am ready to finish the remaining days I have left in this challenge. Just four more days left!

To all you fellow tanglers out there, thank you for your kind words of encouragement and for inspiring me to create today’s tile. Feel free to try this technique on your next tangle adventure and let me know how it comes out!

Until next post…