Anything is possible...

Have you ever wished you could spend a day with a character from a book? Like Harry Potter or, say, Lilah from Zentangle for Kidz?

Sometimes you know such things really can't happen. Harry Potter is fiction; you can't hang out with him in real life. But sometimes such wishes do come true! I have experienced it myself. Over the past few days, I have been hanging out with none other than one of my heroes, Sandy Steen Bartholomew! THE Sandy Steen Bartholomew who is responsible for this website, the Zentangle for Kidz book, and a slew of other Zentangle books that started me on my Zentangle journey and changed my life. Seriously! And even though Lilah isn't here, her big brother Alex is. He's the cartoon kid wrapped up in the snake at the top of the blog page. He's older and taller in real life, though, and did not bring the snake with him, of course.

We are in Providence, Rhode Island for the eleventh CZT Training Seminar. My daughter Caroline just earned her CZT certification. So did Alex. There are now two teenage CZTs on the loose!
(Actually, there is one other teen CZT from a previous seminar. Maria's great-nephew Joe M^cCuine was the first teenager to get certified.)

Can you tell how happy we are to be here?

Alex and Caroline with Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts,
the originators of Zentangle.

The camera flash didn't function right for this photo,
but Sandy and I flashed our smiles.

There were cupcakes!

Alex was pretty happy about the cupcakes.

The past few days have been quite a treat. We spent two long days traveling to get here (ROAD TRIP!), and were rather tired when we arrived, but we have enjoyed a wonderful experience and met some incredibly talented, fun, and kind people here at the training seminar. There are now over 100 new CZTs in the world...some who travelled far further than we did! We have met people from Ecuador, Sweden, Belgium, South Africa, Taiwan, India, and Ireland. Not to mention the folks from all over the U.S., including many who traveled from the West Coast. It would interesting to know the grand total of miles traveled by everyone who came here to become a Certified Zentangle Teacher!

It's a very rare privilege for Alex and Caroline to have attended this seminar. Like all the adults that were here for the same purpose, they both worked hard to learn as much as possible about the Zentangle method...they practiced tangles for hours and hours, and they each developed a tangle of their own. They spent a lot of time talking with the other new CZTs, which included people from a wide variety of backgrounds: professional artists, teachers and professors, research scientists, musicians, counselors, a handwriting analyst, a librarian, just to list a few.

There is too much to write in just one post, so I will be sharing more later. In the mean time, happy tangling! I encourage you to remember the Zentangle motto: "Anything is possible . . . one stroke at a time."

-Amy Broady, CZT-