And We Are Done

The day started with this...

And ended with this...

Jenny from Australia won my tangled sneakers in the Auction and they fit her perfectly...

I met so many lovely people (I borrowed a few photos from Facebook. Also my diploma and a strange sketch I have been working on all day...

After dinner, there was the usual, slightly drunken?, proposals with Jenny. And the accompanying paparazzi. A few men were taking their own photos thinking there was a celebrity here. :-)

Well then, next year, TangleU will be in Santa Fe! See you all then - and I'm sleeping LATE tomorrow!!

TangleU- the Big Day

Today was my day to get up on stage and teach! I was a lot calmer than I was last year. I ended up with three hours to teach "Glowing Prints" and I enjoyed the extra time. I was able to walk around and show my samples and answer questions. 

The work people did was incredible and inspiring!  Here are just a few of the pieces...

Molly Hollibaugh did a mediation-Zentangle class and we made a mosaic with 200+ tiles!

And Marie Browning showed how to use the Tombow colored pencils on impressed black paper. 

And here are the people in my neighborhood... Ummm... The folks I met today. 

I can't believe how many people decided to "play" and make CZT trading cards! I have a big ole stack of cards!!! 

Did I mention I am really tired? Can we say serious-social-hangover?  Tomorrow is the last day and then I will start missing everyone...

TangleU, TangleMe

Every night I think I couldn't possibly be more exhausted... 

Here's a collage of some of the day in no real order. 

My booth with Minion Robin and my new jigsaw puzzles. (Yeah!) my Chief Minion Dianne. I can't even begin to think of what I can do to repay her for her help with vending. She rocks. 

The giant scallops I had for dinner. A very cute sign for... Pedicures and a tea room? My Keeko Kitty tangle. Christine and Jenny - if you know them - they need no caption. Cards for the people I met today. Marie Browning demo-ing. And our enormous classroom. 

Tomorrow is MY class!

TangleU - It Begins!

I have been here in Portland, ME for over a day and spoken with tons of people and I am already crazy exhausted.... And TangleU hasn't even officially begun!

Here are a few if the people I have met...

How cool are the trading cards!!! I thought maybe a few people would play along, but tons of people did it. Yeah! I want to collect the whole set. I'm meeting the real faces behind the names I know from the internet. So exciting. 

And the teachers went out to dinner tonight. All the little restaurants here have interesting art covering the walls. 

Due to an unfortunate incident involving a teacher from Canada being turned back by immigration (what the...?) the whole class schedule was redone. So I am not teaching tomorrow- but I went from an hour and a half class to three hours! So we will really have some time to play with the printmaking. 

Happy Easter!

I had a fabulous day with my mom and my kids - church, music, food, Legos... but my favorite part was my genius idea...

How do I get rid of the candy that the bunny left in the basket?! We ate a few Peeps - yum - but the kids and I can't really eat sugar.

I said "Let's bring the extra Peeps and candy to Gramma Magda!!"
"Yeah!!" everyone yelled.

Gramma Magda is at the graveyard - we usually only bring chocolate on her birthday - but I figured she must be lonely since it has been such a long winter. And today was SOOOO beautiful I needed another excuse to get outside.

Lilah laid out all the Hershey's Kisses on the bench-grave and the black stone was so warm, the Kisses started melting. After we finished the mosaic of candy, in front of the new lilly we planted, Lilah did a finger painting in the chocolate. Ick. Of course, I was out of Wet-wipes back at the car.

We had a lot of fun and no sugar crash!

[Looking at the video - it's interesting to see how the kids naturally made patterns on the ground - and one was a kind of mandala.]

TangleU is Next Week!

Other than kid stuff - my brain has been almost completely obsessed with worrying...ahem...planning for TangleU next week. This year there will be 112 attendees and four-ish days of workshops. My class "Glowing Prints" is only about 1.5 hours, but I've spent days working out the presentation, projects, and kitting materials.

I was (insanely) grateful to my Minions - Bonnie, Jacque, and Dianne, for showing up Sunday afternoon to help me cut foam, and form an assembly line to fill the kit bags.

Jacque sharpened 224 colored pencils... with an old fashioned crank sharpener! Both the electric and the battery-powered sharpeners in this photo failed.  She is a true Minion in the most cleverest sense of the word. She ingeniously used a wad of blue goo (poster putty) to hold the sharpener to the counter.

I stood on a chair (no my legs are NOT that long!) to immortalize the chaos and the super cool stencils, on film. Well, digital "film." Dianne kept saying "Oh, I need that one too..." whenever I held up one of the new stencils. I felt the same way - I especially need the cute little fox... these are all from Dreamweaver Stencils. They rock, and Wayne Harlow, one of the owners, is also a CZT. He sent me some beautiful tangled samples to bring to TangleU.

You can see Bonnie and Dianne's hands cutting foam hearts... they competed to see who could fit the MOST hearts onto one sheet of foam.

I'm hoping to create an ebook about printmaking, so if you can't make it to TangleU or to my studio for a class - keep an eye out for the ebook. The next few weeks are going to be kind-of-insane, so don't expect anything from me! I promise to smile and nod, but that's it.

I'm also vending at TangleU, so if there is anything you want from my Etsy shop, order it now, because I'll probably bring everything that's left with me to sell (like the journals, tin boxes, etc.). I'm not bringing books because Fox Chapel will be there selling everything.

And it is not too late to order your CZT ATC's or ZTA ATC's. :-)

March Journals

Here are my entries for the month of March for Journal52. It's hard to keep up, but I keep pushing myself. I am a little relieved that there is no assignment in the Lilla Rogers Bootcamp class in April since I will be teaching at TangleU and really need to get focused on that... and then I realized that Sketchbook Skool also is in April. Uh-oh. "Remember, Sandy, you choose to take these classes and you enjoy them." Repeat. Again.

Week 9 - Color Swatch

I saw an ad that used the colors red, gray and a smidge of yellow. All very unusual colors for me - so I created a journal entry incorporating those colors with a song that was stuck in my head. I feel so clogged up with thoughts and words that I just can't allow myself to say out loud. Things happen and I can't react or express my views. I am so afraid of what will happen and the few times that I speak out - when something just feels so wrong to me - I am "put in my place." How can my feelings possibly be "wrong"? Opinions and actions, ok, maybe those can be wrong... but "feelings"?

This song is "Brave" by Sara Bareilles and Jack Antoff. Here is a link to the video on YouTube. I really love the words and it was actually cathartic to illustrate them moving around in these two pages.

Color Swatch Journal pages - Sandy Steen Bartholomew

I put these words actually going into the mouth and under the skin...

Nothing’s gonna hurt you the way that words do
When they settle ‘neath your skin
Kept on the inside and no sunlight
Sometimes a shadow wins
But I wonder what would happen if you...

And lately I've been feeling like this...

Maybe there’s a way out of the cage where you live
Maybe one of these days you can let the light in
Show me how big your brave is!

Four weeks ago when I created these two pages, I wanted to do a blog post explaining what was going on and why this song felt so important. Yep... I wasn't Brave enough to even post the journal pages.

Week 10 - Create for a Cause

My "cause" is "speaking up." No, I don't seem to actually be doing it... but maybe thinking about it compulsively is a start?  Since I had already used the perfect song for my cause the previous week, I agonized over what to do for this page, until I stumbled across this quote. 

Too perfect! That's it - I'm putting you in my novel!

Behave journal page - Sandy Bartholomew

Week 11 - Stars

Ah, Something simple without so much angst. Phew.

I used crayons to draw the stars and border. Dripped, splattered and drooled watercolors all over it, then added details with a Micron and some gel pens.

Lesson learned: day-glo colors do NOT scan well.

Stars journal page - Sandy Bartholomew

Week 12 - A Day in the Life of Me

Instead of a specific day - I generalized - and then went with something a bit more symbolic. The waves are filled with all the "stuff" I do all day. The things that overwhelm and wash over me. The sky is full of how I want to Feel. This reminds me a bit of a stained glass piece I did years ago - a self-portrait - called "Head in the Clouds, Fish Out of Water." Except that I actually fit in here.

I reread The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms by Danielle Laporte, while I organized... and reorganized.. my studio. She is an amazing person and I highly recommend the book, but the most important thing I got from her book was about GOALS. We make the mistake of setting specific goals, like "I want to earn $50,000" and then we achieve the goal. But ... so what? We are still miserable. Danielle says we have to do it backwards. Decide how we want to FEEL... and then start doing things that make us feel that way.

Duh. Right? That's why we can/will never finish our To-do lists and we never really celebrate our achievements and nothing ever truly makes us happy. Because our stated "goal" or resolution, or whatever we use for benchmarks is not our true intention.

"I want to feel rich." Is SO different than "I want to have a million dollars." 

So what do I really want to feel? I think it is definitely a work in progress, but it helps to start a list....

Life of Me journal page - Sandy Bartholomew

And then I can keep asking myself... "is this going to make me feel happy, connected... etc.?"

And it really made me want to go to Maine and look at the ocean!! ;-) Because looking at the ocean in Maine makes me feel humble and calm and optimistic.