Remember the tangled greeting cards I shared with you a few days back? Well, I also made a second project (this time a layout) with the Tattered Tangles papers. And as promised, I am sharing it today with you – including a little step-by-step:

This was my starting point: a paper sheet of pre-made tangles in black&white and a piece of white cardstock and one photo, a black Sharpie and scissors. Not much, right?

The idea behind the Tattered Tangles papers is to provide crafters with pre-made designs to serve either as a starting point or as a background to work on. You can use spray ink, crayons, color pencils, markers, stains, watercolours and stamp ink on them to name a few. You could either just colour the images and use them as they are or add additional detail by doodling on them. Or you could use single strips/pieces (like I did on my layout) as a starting point.

Sometimes it is hard to draw the first line on a plain piece of paper and that is what these papers are designed for. I find the idea great as it was quite a lot of fun to continue designing Zentangles (read more about those here!) onto the layout background based on a pre-made strip.

As you can see in this photo, I´ve chosen two strips as my starting point. I glued those pieces overlappingly onto the upper part of the layout and then drew some swirls with a pencil onto the background. These swirls work as a border for the area where my Zentangles will be. I then drew some lines inside the swirled areas to divede the area into several smaller parts. That way it is easier to start designing/drawing the patterns.

Here you can see how I proceeded. I really did not have a special pattern in mind when I started, I just let my feelings guide the pen and this is what I ended up drawing.

Finally, here is the finished black and white background. I used a black Sharpie for drawing as I wanted the black colour to be waterproof, since I was going to colour some areas later. I´ve also added some outlining to go with the Zentangles.

After finishing the backgound pattern, I wanted to add hints of colour here and there and did so by applying some Glimmer Glaze (pink, purple and yellow) here and there. Since the black and white pattern was very bold on its own, I only added lighter colours and only a little here and there.

Here is a detail shot of the coloured parts. Here you can also see that I´ve continued detailing the pre-made desings by adding some more pattern to them. There are also some glitter glue details here and there, but only just a few.

After finishing the background I glued the photo down onto the layout using 3D foam pads. That way the photo stands out a little bit from the background. Since the background is very vivid and bold, I felt that I didn´t need that much decoration to go with it, so I only just added a few chipboard butterflies which I coloured using a paint brush and some green Glimmer Mist. I also added some glitter glue onto the butterflies to give them additional shine.

Then just a few lines journaling written on small watercolour paper strips and

a title consisting of a sentiment. The purple alpha stickers match the colours of the background, but are not too bold. And I just could not help myself and had to add a few black Glimmer Glaze splodges here and there for additional detail. What can I say, I love to use black Glimmer Glaze :-)!!!

Basically, this is a really simple-to-do layout. It just takes a while to do all the “zentangling”. I definitely recommend you give this a try. It is quite a lot of fun and you will always end up with a different, totally uniqu background!!! AND it is very, very relaxing and liberating too! So now it´s your turn to get into some Zentangling – and if you are afraid to try on your own, use the pre-made Tattered Tangles (here is link to the store ;-)…) as a starting point! Nothing easier than that!!! And ENJOY!!!!

xxx, Sanna