In May of this year, we honored Mental Health Awareness Month with our annual Bijou Be Well Series. For 21 straight days, we tangled one tangle a day, putting pen to paper for just 10-15 minutes, giving ourselves the gift of creativity and calm. Our surface was a Zentangle Opus tile, the largest tile in the Zentangle collection. Its generous size can feel a little intimidating at first, but there was comfort in that we were all filling these tiles together, one tangle at a time. I have finished Opus tiles before, and I was excited to start a new...

Maria writes... My lifelong love of letters began around the age of five or six. I absolutely knew I was to become a commercial artist... I even had a green velveteen beret I would wear to prove it. I began selling my art soon after (albeit very reasonably!), and the rest is history! Before Zentangle appeared and changed my life, I was a professional calligrapher. I spent my days studying graceful forms, flowing lines, and the rich history of hand-lettering. Little did I know all of that would lay the foundation for what would become the Zentangle Method. Letters were...

In 2010, Rick and Maria hosted a Zentangle class in Newport, Rhode Island, for passionate tanglers. This event, open to both CZTs and the general public, was one of the first Zentangle events to explore beyond the basic tangling concepts. One of the projects completed during this multi-day workshop was an illuminated letter, created in honor of the birth of the Zentangle Method and the important role that letters play in its history. In this blog, we revisit some of the photos and reflections from 2010. Did you know? This project would later become part of the inspiration for Zentangle...