Art Journal Caravan Adventure Quest - Zentangle Mandalas

Our September Adventure Quest for the Art Journal Caravan was to try creating zentangle mandalas. I have always wanted to buy a real zentangle kit since the first time I saw them on the zentangle website. If you haven't visited the website, you can find it at: http://www.zentangle.com/index.php The idea of sitting and doodling little pictures sounded very relaxing to me. They don't require expert drawing ability. Well, to make a long story short, I just haven't had the money to order a kit, and my inner critic kept preventing me from grabbing a pencil or marker and just trying it without any instruction.

Since today (actually yesterday at this point) was the last day of September, I decided to beat up my inner critic, grab a extra fine point sharpie and just try creating a zentangle mandala. As usual, whenever I tell my inner critic where to go, I succeed in doing what I have thought for months I could never do. I actually ended up creating two versions of the same mandala. I drew the zentangle mandala, then scanned it, and played with it in Photoshop.

Version number one:

Each of us has a camel for a mascot during our Art Journal Caravan journey. I named mine Watson. Watson was a little bit upset when he saw my first zentangle mandala. He wanted a chance to play with one, too. Not wanting to have an upset camel, I let him create the second version:

Both of us were quite happy with our results!

This made me realize that the yearlong journaling caravan will be over in 3 months. (The Art Journal Caravans are sponsored by Tangie Baxter at http://shop.scrapbookgraphics.com/home.php in case anyone is interested in doing it next year. Man! I need to start charging commission for all this free advertising.) Time really does fly when you are having fun. I've created many digital journaling pages that I definitely enjoyed doing. I'd like to print them all out and bind them into a homemade book. I'm afraid that the cost of all of that inkjet printing might be prohibitive, but at least I have them saved on my computer. I've even been faithfully backing up my hard drive. The problem is, it's always nicer to have a printed copy just in case your computer or the electricity goes. I'll have to figure out a way to do this! Does anyone have any rich relatives about ready to drop dead? Oh my. What am I saying? That's what happens when I make a post at 1:45 am! I need to be asleep.