Maria writes: Some of you have mentioned your difficulty in creating strings. Whenever I am confronted with that, I resort to something real simple . . . stripes! . . . lines, ribbons, pipes, moldings, borders. In one of my past lives, I was part owner of a frame shop. I did not do the actual "cut the frame" part, but I often did the custom mat jobs . . . with either "French lines," marbled paper borders or calligraphy. Now, this has morphed into creating patterned borders around art or photos in a Zentangle way whether with pen and ink or with brush and color. There is a basic simplicity of tangling within the string of a stripe and then shading on the outer edges to tie it all together. This is also a fun exercise/challenge to do with tangles that you wouldn't immediately think of as "border" tangles. Simple. Rather impressive. Very cool! P.S. I am especially attracted to the unevenness of these stripes and borders because it's obviously hand-made . . . not machine made. So, no worries if your strings aren't perfectly straight or parallel! Click images for larger views.