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Your Bijou Button

Your Bijou Button

Maria writes:

We all really enjoyed Bijou’s 21 video salute to wellness this past May. Our daughter, Molly, proposed the concept. Jen and Julie (and Bijou) took the idea by the reigns and led the way. It required our whole team to come together to make the event a success. Molly’s vision for the video series was to revisit our Zentangle roots and offer our videos without any sound. It is, after all, how we started teaching the Zentangle Method some 19 years ago.  We felt the instructions should be simple enough to teach without saying a word. 

Well, time passes, doesn’t it? One thing changes, and then another. Suddenly we found ourselves seeing the Zentangle Method become more than we thought possible: more comforting, more complex, more exciting, more interesting. Rick and I taught classes with unlimited passion and joy. It only seemed natural to grow along with the method. Soon, we taught more complex tangles, compositions, and theories.

What goes around, comes around.

The reaction to our soundless videos seemed to be just what everyone needed. For the most part, tanglers seemed to welcome this (kind of) new or rather old approach to teaching. 

Of course, it was always there.  

One just had to press the magic “Bijou button” that's on every phone, tablet, or computer and bring it back to the way it was on our first video. 

You might just want to rewatch all our videos, using your “Bijou button” and relish the golden silence of a truly peaceful Zentangle experience. 

Life is good.

Rick adds:

When Bijou sent me an upgraded keyboard, I was happy to see where Bijou placed the Bijou button. I think it's Bijou's way of suggesting (to me at least) that whenever I find myself stuck between trying to control or command a situation, I always have the alternate option of using my Bijou button to quiet everything so I can then create something new and different and beautiful.

Bijou adds:

Sometimes Rick and Maria exaggerate and make up fanciful tales. Your Bijou button is actually the mute switch or volume controls on your phone, tablet or computer keyboard.

Enjoy the silence.

Maria Thomas

36 comments

  • Love having you & your voices in my art space – would totally miss that aspect of your project packs.I did love the wellness Bijou silence, as I do prefer to tangle in silence sometimes… was a very different & enjoyable experience & feeling. 🥰 thank you everyone.

    Lorraine O’Brien on

  • Now I want to draw a little tiny bijou to put on the mute button of my key board. Although I do enjoy listening to all of your stories and instructions especially reminders to slow down and my favorite "no mistakes "

    Michele Couture on

  • I was surprised by the silence because I had never experienced a video that way. But I prefer your voices, not just in what you say, but sometimes a giggle or well placed mmmmn makes me feel closer than what miles time and money allow. Ick the real world!

    Judy on

  • Beautiful sentiments! Thanks to all at Zentangle HQ.

    Molly Siddoway King, CZT on

  • What a lovely story & I was all excited & looking forward to finding a Bijou button in the App Store, I thought maybe Zentangle inc made one. Nope 😔

    Josephine Wood CZT 36 on

  • I think there should be a Bijou takeover that turns the Mosaic phone icon into a Bijou selfie!

    Kim Kohler on

  • I love both formats. The May meditations were wonderful as quiet meditations because all tangles were familiar friends I knew how to tangleate if I wanted to take off and land elsewhere during those videos. I did four tiles per video to make a small mosaic at the end of each session.

    For the Project Packs, I prefer listening to the calm voices of the Zentangle Royal Family, telling us about how a PP and/or a new tangle came about, the personal stories shared by the presenter(s), the voices reminding us to breathe and relax, the laughing, and us enjoying our personal Zentangle class within that video. It is like being back at CZT seminar with everyone at the front teaching us some new and fantastic way to explore our Zentangle meditations.

    Debbie 'bakayaro onna' Smith on

  • Quiet was fine for this project. But I prefer hearing the teachers. Thanks for the gift of these projects.

    Ginny on

  • Silence does have a place with tangling, but I feel NOT during a teaching class or situation. I love listening to the burble of sound and laughter, during the Zentangle videos. To me, it becomes part of the tangling experience. Those who want complete silence can mute, but don’t take it away from the many just to suit the few, please.

    Sue Zanker on

  • Bijou, I love the tales to tangle to, but the quiet Zen is nice too!

    Carol Sheridan on

  • When learning, some reassuring words are golden, when embedding and playing the silence is golden. Thanks Bijou.

    Ildica Boyd on

  • I am glad that everyone now knows how to silence their phone.

    My phone is always on mute. I don’t want it to ring in the middle of anything I’m doing. it’ll vibrate that’s enough. I watch movies with closed caption on, but I learn by listening. When I went to school, the teachers taught and I learned, I didn’t ever read the books but I got A’s because I could learn by hearing. Please don’t stop using your words. They are wonderful and they teach me how to teach. I always appreciate your videos.

    Lisa Hoesing on

  • Jan!

    Yes!
    …to what she wrote today:
    “I love the idea of a Bijou app & icon! When clicked upon, it would open a thousand tangle patterns to choose from when we’re stuck on what to add next. Or is that just another fanciful tale….🤗
    Jan SailAndBeJoyful on July 04, 2023”

    …with a choice NOT to have to decide….have a choice for a random tangle to appear to use next. :)

    Dawn Price on

  • Please, please don’t take away the friendly chit chat back and forth during the upcoming Project Pack videos. For those who relished the silence, having a button or way to mute the sound is a great idea. It allows to please all of us. I so look forward to the Project Packs; I would hate to have them silent going forward. I attended my first Zentangle workshop in Boone, NC this past April, and it was wonderful!! I am planning to do the next in-person CTZ training in 2024.

    Diana Richard on

  • I want a Bijou tattoo!!!

    Kay Naumann on

  • Thanks for bringing the silence and mindfulness to us. In this age where there is so much noise around us, silence can sometimes feel uncomfortable. I especially feel uncomfortable with too much silence in a class I am leading. Bijou teaches us to embrace the silence 😊

    Suchitra Komandur on

  • I love doing both! I usually listen with all of your fun and interesting commentary, then, tangle along in semi silence, pausing, rewinding, (is that a term anymore!), and savoring.

    Alice Steuck Konkel on

  • Although I enjoyed the Bijou silence in May, I do enjoy hearing Rick, Maria and all of you really. And as you say, if silence is your thing, it’s easy to accomplish with the click (or push/press) of a button. Thanks for all you do, For me, it is great hearing your thoughts and all about it.

    grace on

  • Bijou es adorable! Es mi gran compañía, siempre conversamos mucho, me da ideas, me enseña enredos y da mucha alegría regresar con él a los principios del método. Grandioso Bijou! Loved!!!

    Elsa Dueñas Julio 4 de 2023

    Elsa Dueñas CZT26 on

  • Bijou es adorable! Es mi gran compañía, siempre conversamos mucho, me da ideas, me enseña enredos y da mucha alegría regresar con él a los principios del método. Grandioso Bijou! Loved!!!

    Elsa Dueñas CZT26 on

  • What a cute idea Bijou! I love quiet time to tangle and relax. I am most creative in a quiet environment with my favorite music softly playing and my pen in hand.

    Brenda Jowers, CZT #39 on

  • I love this. Bijou is just so darling and cute!

    Anonymous on

  • Love the bijou button idea. FUN! The videos are fun too.. Also enjoyed all the beautiful mosaics of so many different variations of what we know as the the beginning of Zentangle. Perfect!

    Brenda Shaver CZT 8 on

  • Hi there,

    I LOOOOVE the button, want one on my computer tooo. Lol.

    I have taught many lessons in silence, I love it. The wonderful feeling to be with others and draw is just mind blowing.

    I’m in love with witty Bijou 😍

    Hug Hilde

    Hilde Van Ginhoven on

  • Silence is Golden. Great song from the 60’s … I love to sit each morning in my sunporch and listen to the sounds of everyday life while tangling. From airplanes to dogs in the distance, traffic birds overhead, and in my garden, the quiet sounds of growing. It’s all good. Each sound I hear is a tangle, quietly reminding me of how life is going on around me without saying a word. There’s a crow cawing tripoli … and my computer humming msst.

    Ann Baum on

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