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Winter Dangle Designs 3 December 2018

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Winter Dangle Designs – 3 December 2018

I have had some fun designing these, as always!

I did use some circle, oval and hexagon templates to help me design the wreaths and snowflakes. The dot grid paper helped me draw mostly straight lines for the dangles.

I did sketch them in pencil first before inking them in with a Uniball Unipin pen. Colouring was done with various Tombow dual brush pen markers and some sparkly elements added with Uniball signo sparkle gel pens.

These would look lovely as greetings cards. In fact, I’m thinking of redrawing them digitally and using them to make my own christmas cards this year. Printing out the black line work and then colouring them with traditional media. In the past couple of years I’ve designed my christmas/winter/yule cards digitally and had them printed professionally. This year, I think I’ll do it the way I suggest in my book ‘A Dangle A Day’.

They’d also look great as note cards or as pages in a BuJo, planner, scrapboook or journal. They’d lend themselves to cute bookmarks too.

These relatively simple and small dangle designs are perfect for practicing hand lettering too. And in these four dangles I’ve used four different lettering styles.

I’ve also kept the finished designs simple by not adding any drop shadows, except around the ‘HO! HO! HO!’. Not only that, a lot of the colouring is very simple too.

I do hope you’ll have a go at designing your own, maybe using these as a bit of a guide.  If you do, I’d love to see what you’ve created.

Another December Dangle Design

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As one of my current goals is to improve my hand lettering I thought it would be fun to practice it with another dangle design.

For this one, I used some dangles from my book ‘A Dangle A Day’ to build the dangle designs with a wintry, Christmassy vibe to the finished design, thanks to the traditional Christmas colours of red, green and gold, along with with some blues, purples and cool pinks thrown in.

Of course, I could’ve chosen a non-traditional series of colours too, for fun. For example, the baubles on the dangles and the wreath could be done in pink, purple and blue. Whatever your decor at this time of the year it can be reflected in your colour scheme for your dangle design.

From the initial sketch to posting it on this blog it’s taken me around 6 hours to complete. 

Yes, I started with a sketch and then inked it in traditionally, pen on paper. I scanned that drawing into GiMP so I could remove the dot grid and the faint echoes of erased pencil lines. This was followed by coloring the image. For this I used marker and blender brushes . The last steps were to add texture to the design, a coloured background, a drop shadow and then the watermarks.

I used a Microsoft Surface Pen, a Microsoft Surface Studio and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to complete the digital colouring and so on.

The charms on the dangles are a lot easier to draw than they appear, it’s the colour that really brings them to life and gives them dimension.

It’s always fun to string charms together to make these dangles. I often tend towards more symmetrical designs, but ones like this are good to do too. They all have their own charm, pardon the dreadful pun there.

I take you designing dangles step by easy step in my book ‘A Dangle A Day‘. There are lots of examples of dangle designs in the book that are ready to use, but it’s easy to rearrange things to suit your particular needs. The release date is 8 January 2019, a new style of creativity to start in the New Year, and throughout the year as all the seasons and many different celebrations are covered in the book, along with suggestions for projects using dangle designs.

December Dangle Design for BuJo

Angela PorterLeave a comment

It’s Friday, so that means it’s #dangleday! As it’s the last day of November it seems appropriate that I design a dangle design that would look fantastic as the monthly title page for a BuJO, journal, planner or just a fun design to color and frame or, printed out smaller, used on a greetings card.

As usual these days, I sketched the design out on dot grid paper and then scanned it in. I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and a technical drawing pen ‘brush’ to ink the design, as well as make adjustments to the design.

The final steps were to add a background colour and watermark it for sharing on the internet.

Naturally, I used my Microsoft Surface Pen along with my Microsoft Surface Studio to do the digital drawing. I think I’m going to print this design out so it will fit in my BuJo and colour it with traditional media.

I’m going to make this available as a coloring template in the Angela Porter’s Coloring Book Fans facebook group. So, if you’d like to download and print the template, pop along to the group and join in!

This is quite a complex dangle design to look at, but it’s not that complex to create. In my book ‘A Dangle A Day’, released on 8 January 2019, I take you step by step through the process with loads and loads of examples of monograms and dangle designs for all seasons and all occasions, along with ideas of how to use them. There’s also a fair number of tips and encouraging words within the book.

If you do download, print and colour this design, I’d love to see how you’ve coloured and used it! You can find me on twitter, Instagram and facebook.

Winter Solstice 2013

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Winter Solstice 2013 © Angela Porter 2013

 

Another astronomical cycle completed as the Earth returns to the point of solstice once again.  The first day of Winter.  A time to reflect on the year behind, successes and otherwise.  A time to be willing to let go of all that has run it’s course, either by being completed or no longer needed, to make space for new growth as the Sun grows in power once again, increasing the amount of light flooding the Earth (well the Northern Hemisphere).

For whatever reason, it seems more natural to me to follow markers in time and the symbolism of the waxing and waning cycles of the Sun and how that relates to the patterns that we see reflected in our lives than does anything else. All a bit odd coming from a scientist, perhaps.

This year I will be looking on it as a continuation of a new start in my life.  I have been off work since the middle of November and it really is time to let go of the old patterns of negative thinking about myself that have so blighted my life and experiences.  It’s not going to be easy; fifty years of them whispering and disempowering and controlling me is a very long time.  It can be done and I have to see it as a long term process, with the help of my doctor.  It’s not been easy to admit I need help with all of this, or to acknowledge, truthfully to myself, the impact it has all had on myself.

However long it has taken me, I’m at that point where little steps are needed, and I do have to understand it is little steps, that this can’t be sorted instantly or overnight.

There’s been a complex set of circumstances that led me to this point of requesting help, not least of which was the nagging of a dear friend to get the help needed; it took them over a year to get through to me, that’s how much in denial I have been. However, we did get there.

I’m not prepared to air the circumstances here, where anyone and everyone can see them.  Those who know me will know what they are, maybe.  Those who don’t can infer for themselves what this may be about.

All I know is that I’m quietly on the mend now, slowly but surely, and that is all that matters.

My love and thanks go out to that dear friend who nagged me.  My love and thanks to my little sister who has made sure that I don’t totally lock myself away all the time.  My love and thanks to those I’ve seen and spoken to in the past few weeks, and before that, who have helped and supported me.