ZT for KIDZ! ... Stress! Not Just for Adults Anymore!

Stressed? Got Kids home from school? THIS is the perfect time to try Zentangle®!

I an effort to try and help in the only way I know how - I am making my Zentangle for Kidz! book available right here for download:

Click here to download the book.

I just ask a few things:
1. Please don't be a jerk and do something like... try and sell this book online.
2. I'd LOVE to see the Zentangles that you and your kids create!
Send me a jpeg and I'll post it here on the site for others to see.
Let me know if there is a story to go with it too.
3. If you want a physical copy of the book (with stickers!!) you can get it at my shop - BUMBLEBAT
4. Have fun!!

And since I know that there are some very curious folks out there who might be interested in drawing comics or illustrating books - I thought you'd like to see the "sketch" version of the book?

This is how I figured out what I wanted to be in the book and how it should look...

Click here to download the sketches.

Bauble Tree and Lilah Beans!

Chelsea Radley recently emailed me to tell me about how much fun she and her kids were having with my ebook, The Bauble Tree. She also told me about a few blog posts she had written about the ebook and gave me permission to share them with you. I just wrote a post on my BeezInTheBelfry blog with the first two posts, but thought this one might really appeal to all you Lilah Bean fans and kids!

So here are Chelsea's great ideas!

More Ebooks and Tangle Cards

Hello again. I seem to be on a roll. Well, first let me say that this is all Ms Bartholomew's fault. If it weren't for her and her talent, I would not be so inspired to spend so much time playing with zentangle and especially her lovely little Lilah Beans! That being said, I had way too much fun creating my Christmas cards this year. I decided to extend the fun and once inspired it was hard to stop. I ended up making a total of 6 different designs staring the Lilah Beans. You can now find these cards as printable PDF's on my Esty shop CraftyStx. 

So the first cards I made were the trees. They were so cute. I couldn't resist. I played with the idea on them for a bit. The Merry and Bright card was bothering me. The original was just missing something. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but it kept me awake one night. Then it hit me, an easy fix would be to modify the lettering some and maybe add a Lilah Bean or a present beneath the tree. The finsihed result was much more to my liking. 

The second cards were the Feliz Navidad and the little Bean hopping out of the present. This was just too much fun to do. They naturally lend themselves to mischievousness and hijinks. But I didn't stop there...

The last set of cards was the Welcome Santa and the Season's Greetings. Once I got started on the little guys wearing hard hats, it was only natural to take a look at them wearing elf hats and reindeer antlers. And the little guy wearing the antlers would not be pleased. Who would want to pull that sleigh? 

The next step was learning my printer. I am so technologically challenged. I only have an ipad and my latest addition was an epson printer. And our internet here is goofy so suffice to say I have to go offline and use a wireless nettwork that isnt' actually hooked up to a network in order to connect the printer to the ipad. Whew, and once all that is done I spent some time learning to scan with the epson app. I printed a black and white copy of my cards to play with on cardstock. 

I pulled out my handy dandy colored pencils and my fine point le pen markers and went to work. The results were just too much fun. It is always a joy when your own coloring work is satisfactory. After all and an artist is their own worst critic. 

 

 

Another Epson scan and I now had printable color copies. I invite you to take a look at my Etsy store and see for yourself. Just look for CraftyStx and they are the newest listings. 

As far as my daughter goes... she has recenlty been "Bauble Bombing" as I like to call it. She simply can't resist drawing these little trees. My son has gotten in on some of the fun too; however he leans towards simply adding the Lilah Beans into his art. Take a look at the latest escapades....

Should I tell them I recently purchased the printable book, "The Tangles of Kells" by Ms Bartholomew? 

 

 

Here is the link to Chelsea's first post... Bauble

And the second post... Bauble Cards

And this third one... Tangle Cards

Mia and Lilah - the Lilah Bean Comics

 This summer I was lucky enough to attend a Comic Camp at the Center for Cartoon Studies in VT. My daughter Lilah visited the classroom every chance she got and spent a lot of time working on her own comics ideas. I posted about our experiences on my Beez In the Belfry blog. Here are links if you would like to read about it:
Pow! Zing! Comic Camp!
Pop-Pop-BLAM! - Comic Camp
Splotch! Ploop! - Comic Camp
Ka-zaAM! - Comic Camp
Zip! Squeeee! - Comic Camp
Blip, Bleep! >Sigh< - Comic Camp

And this is a Lilah Bean comic that uses a "Mad Libs" technique. I had to create a comic that took place in a cave with my character getting arrested for laughing... and saved by a smiling cat.

Looks like my comic-camp-adventure had an influence on some of my readers! We received this wonderful Lilah Bean comic from Mia Bonet (daughter of CZT, Elizabeth Bonet)

Deep in space on a space...

island, Lila

Beans dance!



(spinning)



Their dance ends...

so they leave their space island...

so they can dance for others too!


Bye

(cliff)

By: Mia B.

My daughter, Lilah, decided to respond with her own comic...

Once there were four Lilah Beans - Leo, Boby, Ecy, and Mia...

They were acrobats!

One day they all went to a museum...

Mia went to the bees, Leo went to the fake Dinosaur...

Boby and Ecy went to the bubbles.

(Boby is trapped inside a giant bubble)

Everyone got to do potions...
(Mia grew a curly tale)

(drinking the potion, Boby grew giant)...

"Flood!"
(Ecy grew wings)...

(Leo grew crazy-long arms)

They went home...

Reading book or newspaper...

Watch TV...

went to their job.
(they are all swinging on trapeze, with the giant face of Boby in the background).

The end.
(By: Lilah B.)

A note: the Museum Lilah mentions is the Montshire Science Museum in Vermont. They have an exhibit right now called A T-Rex Named Sue, and they have permanent exhibits about bees and bubbles (not related). She visited with her Gramma while we were all at Cartoon Camp.

Have you created a Lilah Bean comic? We'd love to share it here!!

Comic Camp Recap!

© Sandy Steen Bartholomew

I just spent a week at Comic Camp in Vermont.
I blogged about it every day on my Beez In the Belfry site - and there are lots of pictures of the cool stuff we worked on. I had such a fabulous time!! If you are curious, here are the links to the pages. The first link is Monday's, then Tuesday's, etc.

Pow! Zing! Comic Camp!

Pop-Pop-BLAM! - Comic Camp 

Splotch! Ploop! - Comic Camp 

Ka-zaAM! - Comic Camp

Zip! Squeeee! - Comic Camp

Blip, Bleep! >Sigh< - Comic Camp

 

 

Sand Drawings

Lilah and I were so inspired by these incredible sand drawings that we saw on Bored Panda:

Beach art by Jamie Hawkins

Be sure to click the picture or this LINK to see the rest of the article and photos. This beach art is like the 3-D illusion sidewalk paintings, but created only with lines in the sand. Pretty amazing?!

Of course, we were so excited, we headed right down to the beach to get artsy!

I like the way Lilah fit her boat into the triangle shaped nook of sand.

Then it was time to make Lilah Beans! Here's a step by step:

A nice big, round body and little flippers for hands and feet...

 

Draw in the helmet-hair...

 

 

I used my feet to draw some wide stripes...

 

 

Lilah used her drawing rock...

 

She drew in a smiling face and scooped out the cheeks...

And there you have it! Lilah Bean Beach Art!

 

We were going to make more Lilah Beans, but the tide was already coming up over this one's toes.

-Sandy and Lilah B.

Where did the Lilah Beans come from?

 I stumbled over this blog post from 2009, on my Beez In The Belfry blog. It was a real flash from the past since it shows where the original Lilah Beans came from! And this is before they were called Lilah Beans. There are some good ideas here and I hope you enjoy reading it. 

-Sandy

 

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Tangling Kids

Yes, even kids have patterns! Well... that's another post, but this one is about finding patterns in the things your kids watch and draw. The image above is a few pages in my Zentangle sketchbook. The first one is from an animated movie called "Happily N'ever After". It was kind of dumb, but the floor of the castle tower had this amazing mosaic pattern on it. Yeh, my kid thought I was whacked when I said, "Oh rewind that, I need to draw the floor!!" The sketch I made is a quick, rough one, but I captured the idea - kind of a Zendala, but more like a game board spinner. Can't you just imagine this with a spinner? What a great way to choose what design to use next, eh? So pay more attention to what's on TV and in catalogs. Kids' clothing catalogs have some great patterns to tangle.

The second page above shows a bunch of little jellybean people and creatures that my daughter has been drawing. She's only 2 and a half now, so I imagine she'll probably have her own line of stamps by the time she is four too (like my son did). I went through her stack of crayon drawings and sketched the little creatures into my notebook. I've been using them - my own interpretation of course! - in some recent journal entries. I love art journals and writing, but I often have a really hard time getting myself to actually journal. So I've been using Zentangles to get started and incorporating quotes or random thoughts, or even song lyrics, into the design. It's very easy. Just start by drawing a "string" (guideline) where you want the text to be. You can even lightly sketch in the words. When you ink them, add little flourishes, then Zentangle around them.


This is a page I did in the same journal, while on my recent adventure. (My mother and I took a train from Boston to Seattle, then a cruise up to Alaska). The train was incredibly BUMPY! and it was hard to tangle and write. So, I used that as my inspiration.

Notice that I incorporated some of the scenery in along the edge. I used the repetition of the posts and the train cars as a tangle-y pattern. I am really hooked on Lilah's jelly bean people! I even tangled their hair!

The Bauble Tree

 The Lilah Beans and the Pingline Penguins are performing in the new tangle, Bauble, to celebrate the release of my new ebook...

If you'd like to know more about it's creation, take a look at my Beez In The Belfry blog.

There is also a special code so you can download The Bauble Tree from http://bumblebat.wazala.com for just $1.00 (until December 25, 2013) The special Holiday Super-Secret Code is: V7FVMBN547. Be sure to enter it into the right spot in the shopping cart when you check out or it won't work!

Happy Holidays!
-Sandy B.

Lilah Bean Tattoos!

Just in time for the holidays (stocking stuffers?) - I finally listed my new Lilah Bean temporary tattoos in my Etsy shop. There are 3 other new sets listed as well.

There are two of each Lilah Bean design, and one of the Lilah Bean Mushroom stack.

That one can be cut apart and recombined into a super tall stack or used to create a tattoo bracelet.

Or... the Lilah Beans can be cut and used on their own on fingers, toes, ear lobes...

Wouldn't you love to see them hanging out of a nose or peeking out of a collar? Oh... is that just me?
Well, they are known to be a little mischievous, so be careful where you put them.
Get them HERE.

-Sandy B.

Guest Artist - Ellen Wolters

As you may remember, everyone who entered the final Challenge was a "winner" of a Tangle Card pack. I recently received this note on Facebook:

Ellen Wolters > BEEZ ink Studio       Been playing in my kidsclass with the Tangle Cards I won with your challenge! We had real fun, check it out:
http://tekenpraktijkdeinnerlijkewereld.blogspot.nl/2013/09/beans.html
Again thank you so much for the cards!

I was blown away by how clever the idea was. We ALL know that Lilah Beans have "tangled" hair - but I had never seen hair THAT tangled!  What fun to use her hair as a "sampler"?

Here is Ellen's post from her blog along with the great images (used with permission of course). 
The original post (in Dutch) is HERE. I had Google translate it into English:

A while ago I took part in a challenge by Sandy Steen Bartholomew. She is the author of many books on tangling, but also an illustrator and much more. 

Her daughter created Lilah Bean, a bean-shaped creature ​​in various tangles. 
 

I won a prize for the challenge: a set of cards with tangles and the Kids' edition with Lilah Bean! Of course they had to be played with. The children made ​​their own Lilah Beans (Bean Blackbird, Maud Bean, Bean Simone, Lindsay Bean, Eva Bean, Bean Marijn and I of course, made Ellen Bean). 

We gave the Beans a nose and ears. You can purchase such a card set or read more about Sandy Steen Bartholomew. Look at her Facebook site: Sandy Steen Bartholomew or shop in the online store.

These were made by ​​the children. Everyone tangled on each drawing in one or more boxes. 

Ellen's Blog is:  http://www.tekenpraktijkdeinnerlijkewereld.blogspot.com (Drawing Practice The Inner World) Be sure to look around on the site. Ellen has made some great videos (she has one of my Annee!) and tangled alphabets, etc.... enjoy!