June 01, 2025

Zentangle® – April 2025

June 01, 2025/ Gwen Morrison

31 days in May….31 Zentangle tiles selected from over 120 I created during the month! I am still enjoying the “Bright Splash” card stock for the tile material

although I occasionally work on a page out of a *Ruth Heller’s Designs for Coloring* book that I bought for $1 at the library used book sale. I was in pristine condition.

I bought a second pad of the “Bright Splash” card stock but all the tiles for this month – and probably for June as well – are still cut from the first one. The color variation over the surface of the tile appeals to me. Sometimes I make patterns over the variations…sometimes I use the variations as the ‘string’ to start or contain the patterns.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

May 26, 2025

In a Waiting Room

May 26, 2025/ Gwen Morrison

Last week my husband was scheduled of out-patient surgery. The situation had changed significantly from my January 2022 outpatient surgery experience when Covid-19 protocols closed waiting rooms. The expectation now is that patients have a person, usually a family member, that stays at the waiting room during the surgery. We left for the hospital at 5 AM and were home by a little after 11 AM.

We went to the lobby registration desk for initial sign in…and were given a buzzer like restaurants sometimes use. Within a few minutes of sitting down, the buzzer went off and we went with an administrative person to make sure all the payment information was correct. Back in the waiting room for a few minutes…and we were called again by a person to take us back to the pre/post op area. I helped my husband into the hospital gown and socks….put all his clothes in a bag that I would keep (that was the expectation…and I found myself wishing his clothes were not as bulky). The anesthesiologist and surgeon came to talk to us. By 7:15 AM he was prepped and on his way to the OR and I was on my way to the waiting room. I had been given a number so I could track his status on the screens there. I checked in at the desk …in anticipation of the surgeon coming out after the surgery was complete to talk with me.

I filled the time between 7:15 AM and 9:35 AM in that waiting room. Getting a pastry from the bakery/café for breakfast was my first activity. I had loaded some novels on my phone for reading material. I made 3 Zentangle tiles. The time passed relatively quickly. The area was not crowded but it was clear that there were quite a few morning surgeries. One man lay down on one of the longer bench chairs and napped. Most people were reading on their phones; I didn’t hear a single phone ‘ring’ so people must have followed direction to silence them. The green plastic bags with patient’s clothes were near every person in the waiting room! I kept my daughter apprised of the everything via texts.

Everyone must have been a little anxious…most seemed hyper alert (except for the one person that slept) but at the same time relatively calm and appreciative of the quiet, calm demeanor of people at the reception desk in the room….they set the tone.

The waiting room had small rooms at each end where the conversations with the surgeon could happen in private. There was a picture of a dogwood in bloom on the wall in the room I was assigned. The surgeon came in…reported positive results…talked about the recovery instructions which would be printed and provided to us by the nurse. I was back in the waiting room for a few minutes before they gave me a post op room number where my husband was.

He was groggy still from the anesthesia. He seemed to be very challenged to rank the amount of pain he was feeling. It took about an hour for him to eat a snack and get dressed…meet the criteria for being released.

I called my daughter to meet us at our house since I wasn’t sure how mobile he really was. When we got home, I held onto his arm to go into the house…and used the path with the fewest steps. It was slow going but we managed, and he immediately took a nap. The pain med he was given just before he left the hospital had taken effect!

May 01, 2025

Zentangle® – April 2025

May 01, 2025/ Gwen Morrison

30 days in April….so I chose 30 Zentangle tiles from the 93 I made during April. There were more to choose from that usual because I’m dedicating some time as I am winding down each day to creating Zentangle tiles and I made the tiles from a pad of Bright Splash card stock I found at Walmart. It was colorful and prompted some very different starting strings! I am probably going to stock up since it is imported from Vietnam…maybe won’t be restocked. This card stock along with the solid black are my favorites!

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April 06, 2025

Stress Reduction Strategies

April 06, 2025/ Gwen Morrison

Late last summer, I started a lot of new activities and noticed that my stress level, as detected by my Garmin Lily, increased. My stress level and the quality of my sleep are related – when stress is high, sleep quality (and sometimes quantity) is low. At the time I thought I would acclimate, and my stress level would be reduced…but that didn’t happen.

I realize now that the new activities were not the only reason my stress level was high. My back was bothering me and the politics of the country were causing some anxiety as well. I asked my doctor for a referral for physical therapy to help with the back pain and started the PT sessions in December. They coincided with the holidays and a dramatic reduction of my new activities. By early January, I thought my stress level was trending downward along with the level of pain caused by my back.

It didn’t last. With the start of a new semester (geology class), an uptick in new volunteer activities, and the changes occurring at the Federal level….anxiety and stress spiked again and were even more volatile that before. Most of the time I was able to minimize my back issue (thanks to continuing the exercises I learned in physical therapy) so that was not usually a big component to my stress level. The strategies I am applying now (see below) seem to be helping…but I only have a few weeks of results so far. I suspect that I will be tweaking my stress reduction strategies for the foreseeable future!

No caffeine after 9 AM.
Limit TV news and news feeds. Be informed but not scrolling through news frequently.
Practice focusing thoughts on the present.
Continue physical therapy exercises focused on reducing back pain + at least 8,000 steps per day. Swopper chair (bounces) when sitting at my computer.
Move every hour….i.e. take a break from sitting. Use the time for a household chore.
Get some outdoor time every day.
2 hours before bedtime: no screens. Read physical book and create Zentangle tiles. Do relaxing stretches.
Electrolyte drink 3 hours before bedtime.

April 01, 2025

Zentangle® – March 2025

April 01, 2025/ Gwen Morrison

31 Zentangle tiles for March….a single one selected for each day of the month.

After light blue and white tiles in February – I skewed to the colorful cardstock for the March tiles. Toward the end of the month I started making tiles as part of my daily wind down before bedtime – no blue light and some focused activity is a good way to end the day!

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March 02, 2025

Zentangle® – February 2025

March 02, 2025/ Gwen Morrison

28 days in February…28 ‘tiles.’

I cut light blue cardstock tiles and used them for half the tiles.

The two other groups started with a Flowering Dogwood coloring book page with a leaf and the flower. I am using it as the string for a ‘pattern art’ activity included in a Missouri Trees program (Flowering Dogwood is Missouri’s state tree) at a local library for children…so many experiments as part of my preparation. My scanner opted to make the page into two images, so I am including them here as a rectangle and square tile rather than the page with both. As you can see…starting with the same string can still lead to a lot of variation!

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February 27, 2025

Missouri Trees

February 27, 2025/ Gwen Morrison

The topic of the session at the two libraries in a nearby county was Missouri trees. Since it was the fourth (and last) event for our 3-person team of Missouri Master Naturalists, we managed to gracefully recover when one of us (the one bringing some small redcedar branches) had a tire emergency on the way to the first library. She managed to get there a few minutes before the children arrived, but we had already implemented a backup plan by cutting a few low branches from another tree! We were ready to go when the first 15 students (and 6 parents) arrived!

There were four activities:

Examining small branches of trees (river birch, redbud, maple, redcedar, shortleaf pine and eastern white pine). There were some extras that aren’t native to our area but are native to North America and that thrive planted in yards and gardens that we showed too (Southern Magnolia and Eastern Hemlock…the tiny cones on the hemlock fascinated the whole group).

Examining things left from last fall: glycerin and plastic sleeve preserved leaves, seed and seed pods, pine cones, and a white oak seedling.

Counting tree rings (everyone with their own tree cookie) along with some pictures that showed that the rings are not always neat concentric circles.

Looking forward to spring and the state tree – the Flowering Dogwood…with a pattern art project. The picture is of some samples I made beforehand, but the students did beautiful work on their pages…and were very focused (and quiet) while they worked.

The session was a great finally for our series!

February 02, 2025

Zentangle® – January 2025

February 02, 2025/ Gwen Morrison

31 tiles for the 31 days in January. They were all square, mostly done in black ink (a few white splashes), and lots of colors. I did quite a few while I was watching football games!

January 01, 2025

Zentangle® – December 2024

January 01, 2025/ Gwen Morrison

31 tiles for the 31 days of December.

They are all presented as square tiles this month. I segregated the ones I made in New Mexico for this first group of 12.

The rest were made mostly at home. I am using a lot of different colors of card stock…mostly black or white pens although there is a smattering of other colors.

Making Zentangle tiles almost every day is rewarding…and a way to create islands of calm in otherwise hectic days.

December 01, 2024

Zentangle® – November 2024

December 01, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

November has 30 days – hence 30 tiles picked for this post. I made slightly more square tiles than rectangular ones…and had almost 60 tiles to choose from. The black card stock is still my favorite, but I did some on recycled cardboard and other colors of cardstock. Each tile is unique…some with favorite patterns and some with new or experimental ones that appealed to me in the end. Tiles are like rivers…never the same twice.

Most of the time I ‘fill the tile’ but I managed to avoid the tendency for a few and they are probably my favorites…I’ll do more of this in December!

November 03, 2024

Zentangle® – October 2024

November 03, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

I made considerably more tiles in October than I did in September – acclimating to my increased activity level taking two classes (Missouri Master Naturalist training and Identifying Woody plants field class). I enjoyed the usual square and rectangular tiles – skewing somewhat to black tiles.

I did 6 tiles using simple tree leaf/fruit coloring pages for the ‘string.’ I found the pages to include in the educational materials I was collecting about our native trees for younger audiences. It was a fun experiment. I think I will make a version of the pages that has just the outline of the leaves (not the venation) to increase the variety of ways the spaces could be filled.

October 01, 2024

Zentangle® – September 2024

October 01, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

With the two classes requiring more of my time, I didn’t make quite as many Zentangle tiles in September…although more than 30 that I needed for this post. It is a great way to destress…for the time it takes to create the tile!

All the tiles are square this month. I cut plenty of tiles before the month began and just used my supply. I like the variety of the different colors…although I am still drawn to the black tiles and the gel pens. When I find a black tile at the top of my stack, I rejoice. Maybe I’ll do a whole month of black tiles at some point.

September 01, 2024

Zentangle® – August 2024

September 01, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

I created 69 Zentangle tiles in August and chose 31 (one for each day of the month) to share in this post.

I bought some Papermate white ink pens and thoroughly enjoyed creating black paper/cardstock tiles. But – the pens are not going to be ones I will buy again. They either ran out of ink quickly or got clogged because I used up 3 pens in one month! I’ll be experimenting with other colors of gel pins on the black tiles in September.

There were a few tiles that were other colors. I am in the mood for colorful or off-white card stock right now – not the recycled light weigh cardboard.

August 08, 2024

An Experimental Zentangle® Display

August 08, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

When my sisters and I were cleaning out the storage shed at my parents’ old house, I found 4 vertical blind pieces – probably detached from a set long since discarded. They were smooth white on the underside and a patterned white on the other. There was a hole in the top that could be used for hanging. I brought them home thinking perhaps they would work to display Zentangle tiles. It’s been 6 months…but I finally did the experiment; I opted to use a repositionable glue stick to attach tiles made on black paper. It worked relatively well. It’s only been one day so I’m not sure if I used enough glue to keep them in place.

The paper had the advantage of easily curving with the vertical blind piece. I’m not sure if cardstock would be as easy. Maybe I will try using the other side of the blind. I have 3 other pieces to try and, right now, I am thinking of using them separately rather than as a group.

I have other types of blinds that might work even better for Zentangle displays since they are flat…and shorter. It will be good to make displays (maybe seasonal) rather than simply putting the tiles in a box at the end of each month!

August 01, 2024

Zentangle® – July 2024

August 01, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

I created 79 Zentangle tiles in July and chose 31 (one for each day of July to feature in this post). They are all square tiles this month and a mixture of recycled light weight cardboard and file folders. There were a few cut from card stock. I have a lot of materials for blank tiles in my house…and I am enjoying the variety of pens I have right now too.

July 07, 2024

Library Adventures – June 2024

July 07, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

My most frequent interactions with my local library are digital…checking out Kindle books. In June, there were 3 interactions that were not digital at all!

The first one was volunteering at one of the branches with the Friends group used book sale. It was a smaller branch and was only a one-day event. I helped with the set-up the day before and then with the first hours of the $3/bag sale. There were quite a few people that stopped by and left with 1 or more bags of books and the Friends netted $295 from the day. My favorite was an elementary school aged boy that came in with his mom and picked out two bags of books; he was very pleased with his haul and shared that he might share some of them with his older brother.

The second interaction was an art class that was announced in the monthly library newsletter. It was free…held in the early evening…2 one-hour sessions over 2 weeks. It was scheduled in the branch library closest to where I live. I signed up. We made a color wheel the first session and then did shades of the same color (by adding white) on the same small canvas in the second.

I took a picture of the plate I used to mix the paint for the shades of ‘red’ in the second class.

The next day I made Zentangle patterns over the white space of the canvas (and into some of the painted areas as well).

The class was a good learning experience. 1) It was my first experience with acrylic paints…and I realized that I enjoy the pens and Zentangle too much to make time for paints! 2) Canvases are not smooth enough for pens. I used a Sharpie Ultra-Fine pen and it was hard to control the tip of the pen over the bumps of the canvas fibers. 3) A free class is a low-risk way to try something new!

The third interaction occurred when we had a form that required notarized signatures. My husband found out that the library had a notary so we took our form there and indeed the person at the desk was a notary – it was very easy!

Positive interactions at the library….it’s more than just a place to check out books!

July 02, 2024

Zentangle® – June 2024

July 02, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

I created 74 tiles in June…and chose 30 to feature in this post. I did less traveling in June; all of these were made in Dallas or my home near Springfield MO. At my home they were made at my computer table rather than in a glide with a clipboard to support the tile as I had been doing in previous months; for some reason, being at the computer table was easier on my back!

Backgrounds were still the theme when I started many tiles. There were a few that carried over the three-hash-line fill from May.

But the majority used what I think of as ‘screen’ fill. Many of the tiles were created on cardboard cut from separators in cat food boxes.

There were also a few that used circle shapes to fill the background. That might be the one I will continue into June.

And the remaining tiles – where the background was not a factor. My favorite was the blue and green inked square…full of the paradox pattern.

June 02, 2024

Zentangle® – May 2024

June 02, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

I created 68 Zentangle tiles in May…plenty to choose the 31 to feature in this post. These tiles were made at home in Nixa…in Dallas…in Hot Springs…in Eureka Springs. Enjoy the results of my ‘islands of calm’!

There were several themes for my tile making in May. Trilliums (flowers with 3 petals) were in 4 tiles.

There were 4 ‘spider’ flower tiles as well.

I seemed to enjoy three-hash-line fill for a lot of tiles. The 11 below are my favorites.

And then there were the 12 more to make the 31 picks for May.

May 01, 2024

Zentangle® – April 2024

May 01, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

The end of the month and preparing to write this post reminded me that I needed to find the driver for my Epson V600 photo scanner to install on my MacBook Air. I found it easily enough and the install was uneventful…and I was pleased that it worked more reliably that the Windows driver on my old laptop!

As usual I had plenty of tiles to choose the 30 from for this month. It is easy to have a few blank tiles and a pen available all the time. I create most of the tiles in my office at home although this month one was made when I was traveling and eating alone…while I waited for my food. More were made in hotels in Dallas. Creating a Zentangle tile always provides an island of calm!

April 01, 2024

Zentangle® – March 2024

April 01, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

The tile materials for the 31 tiles I selected from my March creations were more varied than usual. The thin cardboard rectangular tiles were the first I made. The unbleached color varies slightly – always warm. I like that this is reused cardboard mostly made from recycled paper/cardboard.