Square Button Delft - Inspired by a project by Marguerite Samama CZT

Marguerite Samama CZT is known in the Zentangle® community for her "Zen Buttons" tutorial (HERE at TanglePatterns.com) and for her "Delft Delights™" class and project kit. While I haven't tried drawing a Zen Button yet, I have drawn quite a few tiles inspired by the bonus project that comes with the Delft Delights™ kit. You can buy the kit HERE on Etsy.

I first came across examples of Delft Delights™ while browsing Pinterest. They caught my eye because I collect blue and white decorative items. You can read my blog post about my collection and see examples of my blue and white tangled tiles HERE. Below is the most recent tile that I drew to use on a birthday card.

If you'd like to see some examples of Delft Delights™ projects that I've found online, check out Tandika Star's tiles HERE and HERE. Chrissie Frampton CZT has some examples on Flickr HERE and HERE.

In September, Marguerite taught a class of 35 CZTs in Ireland. The purpose of the class was to show some unique ways of using Zentangle fragments starting with a fragment as a border. The attendees of the class drew "Square Button Delft" tiles like the ones you see in today's post. I recently joined the Reticula and Fragments Facebook group where Marguerite had posted photos from her class. As soon as I saw the mosaic of tiles in her photo, I wanted to try drawing one myself. You can see the photo from the class HERE on Marguerite's Instagram page. What caught my eye, besides the wonderful blue Delft-style artwork on them, was that they look like Delft tiles enclosed in paper envelopes. They were drawn in such a way that they fool the eye by clever use of shading. Take a look at Marguerite's photo and you will see what I mean. The flaps of the envelopes seem to be sticking up off the paper, don't they?

The border of the tile is based on Zentangle Fragment H5. I filled the center of my tile with variations of Fragment E4, Fragment X7, and "Henna Drum" by Janee CZT.

Below you can see my faux paper border before I filled the center with blue Delft-style designs:

After I scanned the empty border, I printed out several copies of it on a sheet of card stock so that I could try out different fragments and tangles before drawing my final tile.