This page lists various tangles of my own. Please enjoy following along with these step-out instructions to re-create any of the tangles found on this page. However, all images featured below remain the intellectual property of Ildica Boyd. I ask that the images below not be copied or reproduced, but of course feel free to draw your own step outs, and include the tangles in your work 🙂
Pikoruairi
Pikoruairi is a tangle based on deconstructing a craving design used in Maori wood, pounamu and glass works – the Pikorua (although this twisted design is seen in other pacific and worldwide patterns and designs) however in Maori the design represents the strength of enduring friendship, loyalty and interwoven lives, much like the Zentangle community.
Tripiko
Tripiko came about from my love of tangos – taking two tangles and mixing them to dance together. This one combines my own Pikoruairi and Trinity by Stephanie Kiefhaber. I used the elemental strokes of the two different tangles to give a blossom tangle which grows in three layers. It’s ripe for adding various endings to the twists to suit your style and embellishing with other tangles behind it.
SharpeNZ
SharpeNZ came about because as a tangler we spot patterns everywhere! When I treated my coloured pencils to being sharpened all at the same time prior to a lesson, and then within the little tub of sharpened rubbish I saw a tangle! This tangle works well whether it is overflowing the section edge, or as a background tangle tucked in behind others and with some shavings floating away.
Zunnel
Zunnel – Another tango tangle this one has it’s roots in Zinger (ZenHQ) and TunnelVizon by Jody Genovese. I always love a blossom tangle and this is a great combo one with my Zunnel creatures heading out to explore the universe. I originally made this up as like mini floating TunnelVizion creatures floating off from a TunnelVizon base, but I like the drama blossom to set this guys off!
3BSix
3BSix is another tango based tangle, which took a lovely delicate tangle 3 Loop6 by Mina Hsteo and Beadlines by Margaret Bremner. I created a ‘golden snitch’ (for the Harry Potter fans) type tangle which is great for floating in a background. You can take the floating elements and place them in various different parts of a tile to bring the whole thing together too.
Halofoil
This tangle will be recognised by many in New Zealand as the very recognisable Māori pattern representing the Hammerhead shark – mangōpare – symbolising strength, leadership, agility, tenacity, unrelenting determination, and courage. (Our weather service here has a pair of them in their logo – I think it aptly describes our weather sometimes!) I have called the tangle Halofoil, from the Cephalofoil ( the name of the shape of the head of a hammerhead). If you are a Mooka fan, you will probably enjoy drawing this tangle, whether in a growth, blossom or individual element way. enjoy playing with it.
Puffform
A really simple tangle just involving some weird and wonderful ‘C ‘strokes. Unbalanced, random angles, sizes and depths your ‘c’ curves build in a tower to produce this tangle based on some wall art, I saw on a wall in one of downtown Wellington’s pedestrian alleyways. Whether they are worms, intestines or puff adders who knows!
Rocksplash
This was a tangle inspired after a tramp (kiwi word for walking in the wilderness) with the family, playing a cheeky game. Mischievousness is the game, as when one of your group is crossing a river, and the other delight in throwing in rocks to splash them – the family tradition was started by our kid’s paternal grandparents, so taking no credit for coming up with the game, but did come up with the tangle! Please note: never a good idea to start the game, if you are yet to cross the river! The mischievous smile is the first elemental stroke of this tangle!
Mookacirque
This tangle is named after Maui’s Hook. One of our Māori land creation stories is that Maui’s canoe is the South Island of New Zealand, and he used a hook (made from the jaw bone of his grandmother Murirangawhenua) and fished up the North island. I was playing with the hook idea being laid in a circle format and came up with this new tangle. It took me a while to work out the best way to draw this tangle, and the use of the second set of dots is helpful, because once you have built the main centre part, it then allows you to embellish your hooks as you wish, with various different exotic enhancements, you can find ideas in my enhancement guide. Enjoy circling your hooks with Mookacirque!
Balperds
This lineal tangle came to me when I was experimenting with Perfs for my Extend your Enhancement book. Playing along with ways to extend the enhancement technique of adding ‘Perfs’ I had already lined them up, floated them, overlapped them, I decided to balance them – but on what? Ah ha I thought, the little birds. This wee curved line, is a stroke I use in my teaching, (particularly when I am teaching the tangle Gneiss). It’s a great stroke to ask people to draw a far away bird, flying in the sky, then I took this little bird and balanced a Perf on it. and here then is Balperds. BALancingPErfs&biRDS.
TimeZoned
Living at the end of the line in terms of flight destinations can involve long journeys home. (Well maybe not quite the end of the line, from Christchurch we can reach Antarctica.) However heading overseas in 2022, on my return journey, my planned 28 hrs journey home, morphed into a 64 hrs epic marathon of flights! In Hongkong airport – one of the multi-stop journey pauses, I and other fellow travellers were all completed confused looking at the departure board; we could see which gate we were supposed go to for the next flight and when we were to be there – but we had now idea what time zone we were in now, or what time it was! So my confused and garbled headspace inspired this tangle ‘TimeZoned’.
Start in the middle of the clock face head out to noon, then go round the clock face (your flight), then stop the curved line and head across to another time zone and take another flight round the clock face – keep repeating outwards aura-ing the previous flightpath, until you are completely ‘TimeZoned‘ out! You can finish in the middle of the clock face (back where you started) or get so dizzy you finish catching up with one of your flights! Good luck, I’m sure you can create a tile in less than 64hrs!
Walnutz
It’s always fun to spot a tangle in an unexpected place, and collecting walnuts under a tree, and one nut shell that I picked up ended up being a shell only, but it wasn’t that another creature got to the nut first, it ended up being a shell from last year that had fallen from the tree and had never matured into a nut. But what I saw was a beautiful pattern, with gorgeous shadows. So after I extracted some delicious nuts from other shells, I found I was drawn to the shell that wasn’t a nut. Hmmm, being only a ‘wasn’t’ wasn’t what it deserved, it deserved to be a tangle! So enjoy adding Walnutz to your tangling – great for a blossom starter or chained or overlapped. (Note: the starter for this tangle is drawing a five pointed star free hand – so if you are not aware of drawing this in any easy fashion – see below for Matariki Star, as the way to draw it.
Matariki Star
The Matariki constellation signifies the start of the Māori New Year. It is based on the Lunar calendar, so moves each year in mid winter, it signals a time to remember those who have passed, celebrate the present and plan for the future. It’s a time to spend with whānau (family) and friends – to enjoy kai (food), waiata (song), tākaro (games) and haka.
Our tūpuna (ancestors) would look to Matariki for help with their harvesting. When Matariki disappeared in April/May, it was time to preserve crops for the winter season. When it re-appeared in June/July, tūpuna would read the stars to predict the upcoming season. Clear and bright stars promised a warm and abundant winter while hazy stars warned of a bleak winter. there are Nine stars in the cluster
What the stars mean:-
- Matariki is the star that signifies reflection, hope, our connection to the environment, our health and well being and the gathering of people.
- Waitī is associated with all fresh water bodies and the food sources that are sustained by those waters.
- Waitā is associated with the ocean, and food sources within it.
- Waipuna-ā-rangi is associated with the rain.
- Tupuānuku is the star associated with everything that grows within the soil to be harvested or gathered for food.
- Tupuārangi is associated with everything that grows up in the trees: fruits, berries, and birds.
- Ururangi is the star associated with the winds.
- Pōhutukawa is the star associated with those that have passed on.
- Hiwa-i-te-rangi is the star associated with granting our wishes, and realising our aspirations for the coming year.
Loopz
With my love of weaving (my first love) and creating patterns in fabric with the endless combinations of over and under with yarn in the warp and weft directions, the endless supply of weaving patterns is very creative. I always joke with my very computer literate partner that I use the earliest computer, it is simple binary of course! But for Loopz, I hadn’t even got to being influenced by what I saw on the loom. It wasn’t from the fabric, but the simple pattern/ tangle was from the yarn itself. So here is Loopz. Although the weaver in me might question where the yarn ends, these lovely little loops of yarn make for a curvy maze type tangle, that can have fun as a monotangle, and so many other ways – so I’d love to see what you do with it.
Sashwinz
The tangle came out of a need to find a tangle suitable to host my Spill Out technique lesson which I taught at the Yintangle Retreat in October 2023, so thinking of the best ways to help teach the technique I came up with the idea of a window, so this tangle is based on an old fashioned sash window. Although the tangle can now be found within my downloadable Transitions and Spill out lesson, I also found the pattern/tangle not long after in a very unlikely place!
just to prove you can spot patterns everywhere…. luckily I had already named it.
3rioZ
Created for the Fragment of Your Imagination 2024 Challenge, the three of us Nina Dreher-Goeddertz, Debbie New and I, had great fun working together to up with this fragment, which when used with repetition, rotation and reflection (some of the staples of fragment play, makes a great tangle.
Fragfunz
Brought into this world within the pages of the Fragment of Your Imagination book. One of the 25 square fragments designed for turning into play tiles for experimenting with rotation, reflection, repetition and realignment. Some of these fragments were designed to be used as strings as well and make use of the 4 Rs to the full. However this little chap works well with distortion too – enjoy the play!
3SG – three Smiles and a Grin
For a while I had been looking for a background orb tangle, rather than just falling back to the Tipple, and I wondered if there was a sorta pearl like one I could draw. Having sat on the idea for several months, a beautiful pattern on a armoured glove caught my eye, and I was trying to work out how to easily deconstruct it. Turned out is was an easy as a smile. So when you are drawing this tangle it is four strokes, a smile, a smile, a smile and then a grin. Four ‘C’ curved strokes of various sizes and curvatures so bring this orb shaped tangle into life, all in one pen stroke, smiling back and forth on the page. I tried it with my local group, and we were all reciting “smile, smile, smile and grin as we drew it. Hence three Smiles and Grin.
Other options if drawing it bigger scale is to add extra smiles – or add drama, sparkle, 3D effects or rounding.
Frofeese – a FRagment OF chEESE
Playing with a little fragment, is grteat fun, and seeing with wonder how far it could stretch with a little imagination. Although it started as a square based fragment, it brought some interesting mega patterns within some triangle and orb reticula too. I must have been hungry, no matter how I drew this, it kept reminding me of cheese! Now where are the crackers and some quince paste?
Tri3o
The final fragment from 7F5R’s A Fragment of Your Imagination 2025 prompt list, Debbie New CZT, Nina Dreher-Goeddertz and myself, co-designed this cute triangle fragment to celebrate the three of us working together on this prompt list once again. Debbie choose her lovely tangle Tangent as her base, Nina loved the drama Bunzo and I threw in a couple of tangleations of flux with a drama fill. Do have fun rotating this fragment for mega patterns and beyond.
