Zentangle + Wild Gears, a new toy!

By now you know that I'm a little obsessed with Spirograph motifs. When one of my customers told me about Wild Gears, the adult Spirograph, I was all in! I immediately bought a set for my best friend for Christmas and then a week ago I borrowed them from her. After one day of playing I went ahead and ordered her a new set because I have gears spread all over my cutting table and I don't know if I'll get them all organized again.

I'm just starting to figure out what I can do with them but they have some really cool features. They have odd shaped wheels (squared, triangles and ovals) and lots of sizes of rings. 

But one of the coolest things is the ability to do designs in parallel lines with these little inserts. You draw the design once in the big hole and then put the little circle in that hole and do the design again.

This is a really simple design that I did in parallel lines. As I was working with these I thought that I might be able to combine the WG designs with Zentangle for my quilt labels. Fortunately I just happen to have 3 quilts that need labels right now! With this one I will color in the space between the lines and then fill the sections with Zentangle designs.

I'm still getting the hang of figuring out how to read the codes on the gears and rings to predict how the design might turn out. At first I was disappointed with this....but then I got an idea.

I wanted a small, simple label for my Stars At Sea quilt and this design gave me an easy way to create a simple frame. I used pencil to mark the center of the design side-to-side and top-to-bottom and used those marks to center the ring.

Here's the completed label. I can now copy it to fabric to put it on my quilt. I think it's pretty darned cute.

Now I'm playing around to try out more gears and hopefully will find a good frame for my third label. 

In case you need some for yourself, I ordered the Compact Gears and the Full Page Gears for Anne and I just ordered a new set for her plus a couple of other sets for myself. If you like Spirograph, you will love these! If you are on Instagram search #wildgears and you will see some amazing designs that others have done. My designs are baby steps compared to what other people are doing.

​Go ahead, you know you needed a new hobby.