Love Tangles, Floral Fibonacci, and Academic Applications

First I must apologize to mathematicians who clicked here because of the title. I really don't know a Fibonacci from a flower except to know that it is a series of special numbers with a special significance and it alliterates well with the word flowers because it starts with "F'.
We have been doodling away at our house and I'd like to share with you some of our results.
The first is a card for valentine's day. This actually came about by accident and is really kind of a recycled piece. The hearts here were study experiments I was doing for my upcoming class project this week. To learn more about that you can click here.
The instructions called for rubber cement which is a glue and for reasons I can't get into here, that supply was a no-no, so I was toying with other possibilities. Just to let you know, the rubber cement really works the best, though I did not get a chance to try watercolor masking. I loved these hearts though and wanted to repurpose them, so what better than to collage and tangle!

The inside poem I wrote for this says:
In color or in black and white
My love for you will never change
Though we may grey
My love for you will never fade away
Happy Valentine's Day.

Cheesy, but it works.

This next doodle happened as an accident as well. One of my students saw a design I had in my portfolio that I had done close to 20 years ago(ssh, don't tell anyone I'm that old!). It was a type of Spirograph I had done with a protractor. Yes I had a Spirograph set as a child and I loved them! I digress. So anyway, I showed this student how I had done it with our current classroom protractor. This little tool just so happens to have an angle measuring arm attached which created a semi-circle right in the center. Once I saw the design I immediately saw the floral possibilities!
This was done on watercolor paper with ink and water based markers from Stampin' Up.
I channeled the impressionists and did not use any black for shading but instead used complimentary colors to create shading. I am pretty pleased with the results. (if you really knew how easy it was you would not be all that impressed though!:) )




These final pieces belong to my boys. The story behind this is pretty awesome. My oldest son tends to be a bit Eeyore at times, and since he's been battling a little cold, it's been worse. Not to mention he has been worried about his dad and disrupted by all the chaos it has caused in terms of scheduling. My kids are happily rooted in their routines and get very vexed when their patterns are messed with!
So this young man woke up in a very funky state of mind(not talking James Brown here!) So I thought, just maybe...
I gave each of the boys a small piece of cardstock- 1/4 of and 81/2 X 11 sheet, a fine sharpie, and an ultra fine sharpie. They drew a circle with a template and were given 10 minutes to fill in the circle with designs and patterns. They have been watching me do this since Saturday so they knew what to do. I put on Christian music and let them go. Not on only did Eeyore become more like Pooh by the end, he asked to do more! It was as though the doodling was some sort of mental detoxification.
You might try it sometime and see how it goes. We are planning to devote a few minutes to these each school day as a mental wake up exercise. If you do try this, just use music that doesn't have any interruptions in it. We started with radio music, but the talking in between songs was very distracting so I just switched over to our collection on itunes. Here are their results.

These four pieces are by my ten year old Taylor. They are very interesting to look at. To me they look like microscopic images of some kind.





This last one is by my seven year old, Ryan. He absolutely adores color, so he colored his.

Can you see the little blue man in the center being pulled or reaching for something and a little ghostly face in the lower left?

Just thought of something... these might be really fun to play I Spy With, or create your own I Spy Tangle Book with!

If anyone is interested in a tutorial for any of these, please let me know, but for know we will let the finished projects stand on their own.