Together We Can

Fun stuff - I finished my "Kitty Love Shrine" for Fancy Feast and Friskies, and shipped it off on Holy Saturday.  Evidently it made it - I found it in their gallery here.  Click the link and I'm the first on the left on the 4th page.  Woot!  Since I am such a brat, I'm including my way better picture with this post.  Since it's online I don't think I'll get in trouble, right?  Too late to worry about that now!

I will say it was a lot of fun doing it, but wow was it a lot of WORK.  And stinky!  I apologize to the person who opened the FedEx box on April 7th - I used some powerful adhesives to keep all those cans together!

Speaking of togetherness, my good church friends and I have been working on a fun get-together for women on Friday night.  You can read all about it on my friend Dipsydoodle's blog!  Dipsy & I have spent a lot of time making gorgeous crafty goodies for the chicks who are coming - last count was 50 people!  We will be doing this 4 times a year - next one will be in July and I hope we get even more women next time.

Shameless Pimping

Well life moves along and I'm trying not to get bowled over by it. What's new? I have a few things going on. First, I am the new Kansas City Craft Shop Examiner on Examiner.com. So far I've published two articles and it's pretty much a lot of fun although a bit harder than writing a blog - in a blog there are no rules, really. Now I have to knuckle down and play by the rules. So far I've made 14 cents - woot! Click here to see the site - and if you'd like to follow me I'd sure appreciate it! Also, please email me if you'd like to write for them as well - again, shameless pimping for moolah here! I do what I can!

Speaking of cans, I've been selected to submit some art for the Together We Can art show by Friskies & Fancy Feast - making art from cans. Cat food cans, of course! They are everywhere in the house. I teased the Deacon that we would all have to eat cat food for awhile - I don't know if he really believed me, but Mrs. Deacon has been cooking a lot lately - hmmmm.

Well it's Holy Week, I'm tired and ready for bed! I'll leave with a couple ATCs I made for Katilady's Virgin Mary Swap last year. Hand drawn; prismacolors on watercolor paper.

Cheeka's back - again!

Here I am again after a long hiatus. It's funny, I've lost pretty much everything. My car, my house, but not my self respect, sense of humor or my faith. I'm living with the Deacon of my church and his wife - in the basement. Some days I feel like a kid living with mom & dad. But as I often say, it's all good. I'm blessed - I have a place to live, food, and thanks to my ex-boss keeping me through the 1st quarter of last year, another unemployment claim to keep me going! Woot!

First, a few things I need to say...to the women with children I see on the bus in the evening, wow. I'm so impressed. I could never do what you do! I can't imagine getting home at 7:00 pm with two or three children and still having to cook dinner, give baths, say prayers, etc. Sheesh!

To the Methuselah's dad who I helped over a snow drift - how do you keep going day after day? I hope when I am that old I do not have to take a stupid bus!

And finally, to the men who are as tired and worn out as I am after a hard day's work who give me their seat just because I am a girl - THANK YOU! I am happy to leave equality behind when I am tired. And I always appreciate a kind gesture. Thank you so much!

At any rate, you ask, have I at least been creating? Of course, although not as much as you'd think...but that is changing! Here's a few of the latest swaps I've done - I dropped out of a few, too depressed some days, too lazy and I did have a lot of moving around of my art space in the last year.

Katilady's Queerious Swap:





There's alcohol inks on transparencies, book scraps, paint, paper, the whole works! Lots of fun!

RobbyGirl's Cheshire Cats - Get Your Grin On swap






































Now that's enough to wet your whistles for now, okay? Rest assured I will be blogging regularly now. I'm through hiding. Great changes are coming - I'll talk about that tomorrow.

Soooo.....

Here I am again! It's been a wild ride, believe you me. I don't even know where to begin, so I'll probably start in the middle. I traveled a lot in my job through March - came back from a trip and was let go for whatever reason. It was weird. The week before, not only was my work "perfect" but one of the attorneys was taking me to lunch he was so happy with my performance but I had a client meeting coming up that day and had to decline. Not sure what happened after that, but color me jobless! It's a drag, there's so many people competing. But I trust that God has the perfect plan for my life, you know?



Obviously I never finished the Soul Journal - I might get back to that soon. You know, you'd think I'd be creating like mad with all this free time, right? Au contraire! First of all, I was going to have a roommate, so with the help of many, my art studio got packed up, orgainzed and started to move to the garage. Then potential roomie moved all her stuff in, went to visit her mother and I haven't seen her since. We've texted a few times and she got salty with me when I suggested she get her stuff outta the house - including the two lizards. I worry about those dumb reptiles every day, her boyfriend occasionally comes and gives them water and crickets, but I am too scared of them to give them anything and I'm terrified I'm gonna look in there one day and have dead lizards in there. Ugggh. so all my art supplies are spread all throughout the living room and I realized halfway through that the garage is too hot for most of my supplies except maybe colored pencils and beads. Everything else will mold in this humidity! Onto plan B - I'll tell ya about that tomorrow.



What else? Hmmm. Had a boyfriend, let him move in. Dumb mistake. Suffice it to say that said boyfriend ate like a sumo wrestler and did play a lot of playstation, but mostly annoyed me. Isn't that awful? When he finally left, I felt nothing but relief. No crying, no nothing...just peace!


Okay - art - have I done ANY? Well yeah! Lots! Right now I'm hosting a swap on AFA called Six Word Memoirs - it's a chunky swap and the point is to tell part of your life story in six words. So here's a few I've done - one completed, one completed except for the chunky goodness and one started...enjoy!




Good Sex Is Worth The Drama



Scary Childhood, Nervous Adulthood, Finally Free




My Mind Is Full Of Art


Of course, the 12-year-old boy in me sees it now as My Mind is Full o Fart - and now you will too! Har.


Okay I will stop for now. Blogger is getting ready for a scheduled outage and I have so much art
to share, it's amazing. But don't want to like overwhelm everyone and all - grin.


Hugs and kisses to everyone! Life really is divine...

Where Have All The Cheekas Gone?

Okay, when I started this blog I swore I would never mention why I missed posting for awhile - because that is so lame! However, I will admit I've been stymied by the paper doll part of the Soul Journal project. It didn't occur to me till the other day that I could just SKIP IT! So that's what I'm gonna do till I get inspired to make paper dolls. Expect to see a big fat update in that arena soon!

So I've been creating like crazy - mostly ATCs, with a skinny book and a chunky book thrown in for fun.

First up - a coupla swaps! Here's the cards I made for the Sock Monkey swap - where you ask? AFA (atcsforall.com) of course! No hostess card but I did send a gift - drawing is hard!

Then some digital cards with transparancies - wow I love those! Of course, these also were for a swap on AFA.

I really enjoyed these! Transparencies RULE.

Enough for now - hugs all around! And if you get a chance, check out my girl katilady's blog - it kicks ass! As does she. I now own 4 atcs of hers - I am a lucky duck. She's very deep (unlike me) but still a lot of fun - like she's not a dorky loser or anything. And sexy, too! So enjoy!

Aww Hell

Okay, so like, I'm really, really behind on the Soul Journal now! I got so exited about that, I neglected my swaps! I think I broke some kinda rule or something! Rest assured I am caught up and ready to rumble! Thanks for all your nice comments the last two weeks!

I only have a coupla things to post art-wise, but believe me after this weekend I'll have lots!

Here's a skinny page I did for a swap on the art techniques group on yahoo; the theme is summer. One of those commitments I made back in June I think. I made 25 of them - ack! It was good practice, however, because I joined a techniques fat book swap and need to do 120 pages for that one! Sheesh! What was I thinking?

The poem on there is one my gramma (waving! hey gramma!) sang to me when I was a kid - hell, when I was an adult, too. My gramma was always singing some silly song. Too bad she's not here to sing them to me anymore - I'm glad I listened although some of them were horribly racist and I can't sing them these days. Even in the privacy of my own home, that stuff embarrasses me now - amazing that we didn't think a thing of it back in the day! When I think nothing's changed really, I can remember stuff like that and say, well it has changed a bit. But as usual, I digress...

Then I made this lil ATC for another swap on atcsforall.com. For some reason my friends are calling me pickle (or dickle when I'm being feisty). So to honor my new nick, here's a card.

It was suggested to me that she looks preggers, and perhaps if she wasn't such a boozy slut, she'd know who the father pickle was - I'm not sure how this all came through in an ATC! All I have to say is - "don't hate, man!." Pickles need love too and maybe she's just ummm chubby. I know in my case an unfortunate clothing choice can make people ask "when's your baby due?" although as I get older that happens less and less! Good thing, too, that sure embarrasses a person - not me, because hey I know I'm a chubette. It's all good.

Thanks to all my fellow Soul Journalers for leaving nice comments - I read all of them even though I was busy at work and all and no time to respond. I treasure every comment I receive! So here I go, back to the art grind, if you can call it that!

Wow - Christian the Lion!

Okay - uggh. I HATE crying. This was so worth it. Nuff said. Stupid YouTube won't let me autopost to my blog so I'm just linking. I promise you'll like this.

Christian the Lion

Just watch it, okay? And bring Kleenex!