The Adventures of KJ & The Dreamy Giraffe

Adventure # 110: KJ Plays Games (Part 2?)

Dear You,

I wonder, if, when the inventor of Scrabble (who apparently was named Alfred M. Butts) invented Scrabble, if he anticipated that, decades later, his game pieces would become such a hot item in the world of arts & crafts supplies. 

The first time I saw a Scrabble component used in such a way, was in Littleput's genius Scrabble journal, which uses the actual game board as a cover. 

And then came her delightful Scrabble tile pendants.

And her Scrabble tile pendant tutorial.

And now...if you search Etsy for "Scrabble", you'll get 302 pages of results, mostly pendants (though none by Littleput, who is no longer making them.) 

I wonder if all the other board games are jealous.  If you search Etsy for Monopoly, you get only seven pages.  (AprilAdriance has some very cool notebooks made of the Monopoly cards in her shop.)

What does this painting have to do with Scrabble, you ask?  Well...as Littleput proved with her journal...the tiles aren't the only valuables in that Scrabble box!  I did the above painting on an actual Scrabble board!

It will be listed in my shop tonight.  In real life, the background is sparkly and glittery and that is completely lost in the scan.  <insert sad face>  I wanted to use more of the layout of the actual Scrabble game -- the squares and everything, in the painting, but Scrabble boards do not accept paint readily and easily, let me tell you!  (The girl and her dice-seat and game pieces were actually painted on seperate canvas and collaged on.)

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd I have plans for the little letter holder thingys, too!  And, yeah, I may even have to use a tile or two...though no pendants here. :)

I hope your July is off to a super duper dreamy start!  May there be many adventures this month for us all!

Love,

KJ

Adventure #109: KJ Smells Like A Science Project

Dear You,

(The above is my two-for-a-few-more-months -- yipes! how fast they grow -- niece, Kaylee, or rather, a painting of her, which was a Christmas gift for my sister, or was supposed to be, but I didn't get it finished until May, so I actually gave it to her on Mother's Day.  And, to be 100% honest, it's still not completely done -- Note to self: change the color of the shirt to pink!  Note to everyone else: Kaylee is much cuter in real life and, not to knock my skills as an artist, but I really don't think the painting looks like her.  Everyone else says it does, but I think I got something wrong.  Maybe with the eyes?  Anyway, I think it's much harder to capture someone you actually know on canvas, but I can't figure out just why that is.)

Anyway!  I intended to write this yesterday, but yesterday was not such a good day.  You can read more about that here if you'd like, but this post is not about sad things.

This post is about happiness and smiles and days that are good.

This post is about Kaylee, whom the day before yesterday, told my sister, "Mommy, you smell like a potato."

Then, asked what other people smell like, she responded, without hesitation, "Kathy (that's what the K in KJ stands for) smells like a science project!" and "Mimi smells like a painter!"

I do not understand though, why my mom -- Mimi -- smells like a painter!  I totally should be the one that smells like a painter...whatever that smells like, exactly.  See this?

That is an actual picture of a section of a pair of my "painting pants" -- I am the one that smells like a painter, dang it!  :) Proof!:

By the way, when Kaylee was last here and saw me in those pants, she asked, "Are your pants painted on, Kathy?'

And when I said yes, she told me I need some different pants.  (Strangely enough, though, the other leg has next to no such acrylic embellishment!)

Oh!   And, by the way, what does Kaylee think she smells like?

"A princess!"

Of course!

KJ

P.S. I finished the "Sweet Dreams" painting!  This is the second one I've done where the girl has her eyes closed (prints of the first are here).  Eyes are such a huge part of my work, it surprises me how much I love these eyes wide shut girls.  I definitely want to do more and have ideas for several!  Perhaps I'll get it scanned in properly this afternoon and can show the completed painting off. 

Adventure #108: KJ And The Dreams (Both Sweet & Not So)

Dear You,

The above painting is going to be titled "Sweet Dreams" and I got to spend all of yesterday working on it. 

Yep, my jury duty was short -- um, not quite sweet,  though.

You see, at my last "real" job, I worked at a law firm.  Now, I had some really great times there.  Really great.  For a while, it was the best job I'd ever had.  I had awesome friends there (most of whom left around the same time I did).  I loved it.

But when it got bad, it got bad fast and towards the end...things were not good.  And by "not good", I mean, when I think about ever having to step foot within the walls of that place again, I sort of break out in hives, to this day, almost three days later.  Other than my wonderful friend, Summer, I've not seen anyone from there in a really, really long time.

Last week, knowing about jury duty, I had a nightmare that one of the attorneys from my old firm, and his paralegal, were the defense for the case I was put on the jury for.  And they came in on the last day with guns and went on a shooting spree.

Well.

You cannot -- heck, I cannot -- imagine the look that was upon my face, when I filed into the courtroom with all the others there to do their civic duty -- and the first person I saw was that paralegal, and the second was that attorney.

These kinds of things happen to me all the time. 

But, anyway, I was excused from that case, since I knew involved parties, and wasn't picked for the second, and was sent home to paint, and I have a good chunk of "Sweet Dreams" done to show for it. 

And, in case any of you have the same concern my mom had, let me just allay that and say: Yes, the little girl napping in the soon-to-be chocolate frosted doughnut, will indeed have a mouth!  So no worries. :)

Since a couple of people asked about the mermaid (hi, guys!), here's a little sneak peek of her:

She's entangled by quite a few octopus tentacles and is appropriately titled "Entanglements".  She's not 100% finished yet.  I'm going to be putting some text on her, like this piece, but I haven't decided completely what I want it to say yet.  She was the type of girl who didn't let anything hold her back?  Maybe.

Oh, and sweet Kalina, I have actually done a hula girl! 

She was actually done as a part of this project (the rest of which has been postponed for a while -- but it's okay!).  I would love to do another, who looks more like a native of Hawaii, one day...that's definitely on my list!  Since this one's audience would be mostly children, we decided to put her in a bathing suit underneath her grass skirt -- but I really want to do one wearing the coconut bra!  You can't find THAT at Victoria's Secret. :)  (And thank you for your sweet words!)

See you later, alligators!

KJ

Adventure #107: KJ & The Very Big Goals

Dear You,

Long time, no blog!

Do any of you who happen to have any spare time at all, want to donate to the Let's-Give-KJ-27-Hours-In-A-Day fund?  A minute or two here and there would add up, y'know! We could get me there!

My goal for June is to list a brand spankin' new piece in my Etsy shop…every single day.

It's the ninth and…so far, so good.

Here's a sneak peek at what's already up over there:

I have enough new pretties to last through the 17th.  But to meet my goal, I have to come up with 13 more! And I have jury duty this week!

Can it be done? With only 24 hours in my day?

Well, we shall see! I certainly am going to give it the old giraffe-y try!

And my goal for July is to revamp this here blog…and my goal for August is to blog everyday!

Anyway, over the next week, in the shop, there will be (in no particular order): the butcher, the baker AND the candlestick maker (but rub a dub dub -- no men in that tub!); some bunnies, a girl who doesn't quite fit in, a mermaid who refuses to be held back, a gnome, a girl who dresses to impress, a former marionette, and a girl who is on pins and needles.  Which one will make an appearance today?  I don't know...but she'll arrive sometime between seven and ten p.m. (east coast time!)

Hmmm. There are no fairies in that list. I'll have to do something about that!

So…I have approximately two hours to get myself together and to the courthouse.

Hasta la vista from Juror 0062!

 

KJ

Adventure #106: KJ Is Back In An Office

Dear You,

So, back in Adventure #105, I mentioned a big commission project that I couldn't show off. 

WELL. 

Here are the details!:

Though all I've fought to do since I quit "the real world" is to support myself with my art and to prevent having to ever, ever again work a conventional 9 to 5...to stay OUT of offices -- it seems that I'm going to be back inside one, in a fairly big way.

Well...my art is anyway!

I am doing quite the collection of custom 11" x 14" paintings for a pediatric dental office in the northeast U.S. 

The process has been an absolute blast thus far and the dentist who commissioned the pieces is an absolute dream to work for.  I worked in a pediatric dentist myself for a while, while in college, so I know firsthand how scary those visits can be for little ones and it makes me so happy and honored to have my art on the walls of such an office, where maybe it can help calm some nerves and cheer some fearful hearts!

This is going to be the biggest number of my paintings in one place (other than my own house, that is!) and it's so exciting to  think of there being sort of a little gallery of my work!

The super cool thing about it is, though, that the majority of the paintings are going to be of the staff, with a painting for each employee, done in my style, based on their appearance and personalities and interests.   That was all the dentist's idea and I think it's such a neat one.

We're doing them in batches of three and are still only about 2/5ths of the way done...but the first fifth has been packaged up, sent off, arrived safe and sound (THANK GOODNESS!) and seen by everyone, so it's no longer a top secret surprise and I can finally share those with you!

So...without further ado...here they are!

There's a female dentist at the practice, so of course, I had to paint her as the tooth fairy:

 

(I had a really difficult time deciding what color the tooth fairy's dress should be, so I asked in the Etsy forums, and got a variety of opinions -- so I just made her dress ALL THE COLORS!)

I think the story behind this next one is the sweetest.  There's a girl who works there whose parents are both deaf, so she is fluent in sign language.  When I found out about that, I absolutely had to do her painting incorporating some kind of sign language...the sign for "I love you" to be specific!

 

And, though I don't like to play favorites, sometimes you just can't help it...and I think this one is my favorite out of these three.  I had such a difficult time with the unicorn, at one point, I really and truly believed I wasn't going to be able to do it.  BUT I did!  And I completely love him.  I will definitely be doing more paintings with unicorns in the future!

 

Well...as I said, we still have quite the ways to go, so I have painting to do, so I better go get busy!

Have a super duper weekend!

KJ

Adventure #103: KJ, The Original Peanut Butter Girl

Dear You,

Long, long ago, and far, far away, when I was a little girl, a friend of my maternal grandmother always called me "The Peanut Butter Girl".

I always thought this was because I liked peanut butter sooooooo much (and still do -- make mine crunchy, please!), but recently, I asked my mom, just to make sure, and turns out I was misinformed.  I earned the name Peanut Butter Girl by looking like the little girl that was on the jar of some brand of peanut butter back in the day.  (I have Googled extensively and cannot for the life of me find out which brand it was and my mom doesn't remember.)

On a seemingly unrelated note: I like painting superheroes.  Along with mermaids, princesses, pirates, fairies, and my versions of fairy tale heroines, they show up fairly often in my work.  And to me, Peanut Butter Girl sounded sort of like a superhero name.  A superhero with very laidback superpowers, for sure, not the type that's out leaping buildings in a single bound or battling dark forces with deadly ray-guns, making bad guys sorry they were ever born.

And so I started dreaming up what Peanut Butter Girl would look like.  What WOULD her powers be?  And, of course, she'd have to have a sidekick, 'cause what's peanut butter without jelly?

And soon thereafter, Peanut Butter Girl and Jelly Bean, her faithful companion and partner-in-(lowkey)-crimefighting were born.  They're not your average superheroes, oh, no! Their superpower is the ability to discern the precise moment someone is absolutely going to freak out if they don't get a PB & J, and to bring aforementioned PB & J to the poor about-to-freak-outter. You might say they're saving the world, one sandwich at a time.

Here they are, starring in their first adventure, "Peanutty":

 

WELL.  A painting of two peanut buttery superheroes is kind of a quirky painting.  Um, what I mean is, it wouldn't fit as neatly and easily with traditional and  typical living room decor across the world as, say, a nice landscape or abstract piece would.  It would take a certain, special, unique, peanut butter-lovin' individual to have the wall just right for it to hang on.  Not just any setting would do for art with this sort of offbeat subject matter.

I actually kind of believe that each of my paintings don't sell until that right, perfect buyer comes along and finds them.  Like, you know, if a painting takes a year to sell...it's because it took that long for the person who absolutely, positively was meant to have that painting to see it.  (That sounds a little hokey, but, I do genuinely hope that is how it works.)  And that was certainly the case, I think, with "Peanutty".

Adventure #102: KJ & The Most Productive Day In The History Of Time

Dear You,

Look at what I got done today!:

Okay...I didn't DO all this today...but I did get it all done today. 

Hmm?  What?

These are all paintings that I've had sitting around, half-finished, FOREVER, and though I didn't start them today, I did finish them today.  So, though I didn't paint all this in one day, technically, it IS a true statement that I completed all these paintings today. ;)

There's the girl with the blue hair, who is wearing sparkly eyeshadow, but the sparkle was lost in the scanning.  She dressed flashy, the try to spice up the office where she worked, but no matter what she wore or what color she dyed her hair, 9 to 5 M - F remained boring with a capital B.

Then there's the first of my "School Picture Day" series.  This sweet little girl's name is May.

And Green.  Green was her name, the color of her eyes, and her favorite color, period.  She was adopted and had never met her birth parents, so she didn't know for sure, but she fantasized that they were leprechauns.

And finally, the girl who made ordinary things extraordinary.  Better watch out or she might show up at your house, with her glue and buttons, to make some of your ordinary things extraordinary!  (What's pictured here isn't the full painting.  It's an 11" X 14", so I have to scan it in four sections and them stitch them together in my graphics program.)

They'll all be in the shop over the next couple of days (& better pictures of that last one will be up there, if you'd like to see them!).

Love,

KJ

Adventure #98: KJ Learns She Is Not Perfect

Dear You,

Last week, at the post office, I was standing across the counter from my Friendly Postal Worker, while he was weighing one of my packages, when I noticed something amiss on one of my labels.

"Oh, no," I said. "Can I have that one back for a second?"

You might be thinking the same thing Friendly Postal Worker must've been thinking, as he handed it to me: That I'd misspelled the addressee's last name, or had the street number wrong, or only had four numbers in the zip code.

Um, no:

I'd just left out the comma between Dallas and Texas, so the address looked like:

When I told Friendly Postal Worker that that was the oopsie I wanted to fix, he said, "Ah, you want everything to be just right and proper, yes?"

And I said, "No, I want everything to be perfect."

Which is true, kind of, but ugh, but what a drag is that.  Because is anything perfect?  No.  So that goal always leads to disappointment and letdown. 

So, my fellow perfectionists, let's stop trying for perfect.  Let's just wonderful and fabulous and sweet and understanding and friendly and funny and caring...and imperfectly good enough.  Chances are, after all, no one expects you to be perfect but your very own self!   So, let's be our best, which will never be perfect.  Our best, which includes our flaws, because they are apart of who we are, and without our flaws, we aren't really being our best, because we aren't really being US.  

Where is all this coming from?

Weeeeell, this morning, I was going through my art, getting a bunch of stuff ready to list (oh my gosh, the hoarding -- I had NO idea that I had like thirty something pieces finished or veryveryvery close to being finished -- why don't I listen to the advice I so often give other -- if people can't SEE your work, they can't BUY your work), and I picked up a painting that I've never listed the original of, but have had prints of available in le shoppe for a long, long, long, long time.

And imagine my inner perfectionist shrieking in horror, and possibly curling up into a teeny tiny ball of humiliation and shame, upon  my realizing, that yes, the girl in this painting?  Only has one set of eyelashes.  And it kind of makes me laugh -- because I am normally so picky about each and every little detail -- but, um, yeah.  No robots here, obviously.

 

And, yes, I really and truly listed her that way and all this time have never even noticed.

You can see the actual listing here -- I've not changed it yet, but tomorrow, after I give her that second set of lashes, I will.  Actually, I may take the print down and list the original. 

In other news, I had three really, really, really, really bad nights, totally sleepless nights, so I've sort of kind of fallen off the NaNoWriMo bandwagon.  But I AM going to get back on tomorrow morning.  Thank goodness, I was able to sleep last night.  Actually, I slept most of yesterday-day, then last night.   I don't want my blog to be known as The Drugged Adventures of KJ & The Dreamy Giraffe, but I think I have to say:  I am so very, very, very grateful to the makers of Tylenol PM.  I am just not a girl who can function without her zzzzzzzzzzzzzz's.

Imperfectly,  Well-Rested-ly Yours,

KJ

Adventure #97: It's True, KJ Will Paint Whatever You Want Her To

Dear You,

I've been keeping pretty busy lately with working on commissioned custom pieces (which I'm always thrilled to do...the more, the merrier...hint, hint ;)), but yesterday, I took a break from painting to go get supplies so I can do more painting.  Oh, and so I could go to lunch with my friend, Summer, (Unofficially) The Nicest Person On The Face Of The Planet.

We hadn't been to lunch in a while, so we went to our favorite restaurant, Red Bone Alley, where we had a waiter so ridiculously attractive that my math skills flew out the window and I forgot how to do basic multiplication and I think I left him like a 40% tip.   Girls, this is how the good-looking menfolk begin to affect you when you work at home and don't see many of them live and in person (so McDreamy & McSteamy do not count) on a regular basis, so just be aware.  It was a lot of fun catching up.   (For those interested in the details, I had the Mexican Pizza Dip.) 

Then I hit Hobby Lobby.  One truly awesome thing about being an artist is the supplies.  Love, love, love supplies.  Love, love, love anything made by Die Cuts With A View.  Love, love, love that Hobby Lobby had all scrapbooking papers 50% off this week so I got 2 matt stacks for the price of one.  (The  Rock Star one & The All Dressed Up one.)  It kills me that I can never find any of the Once Upon A Time line in stores.  But, then again, it's probably a good thing -- because if I did find that one, I probably wouldn't be able to limit myself to the matt stacks. 

Today, I'm back to work, spending the weekend on more commissions that I'm really psyched about and ready to get going!

Here are some shots of the ones I've just finished up:

An idea sketch of a dragon, which is more detailed than my usual idea sketches, but I'd never painted a dragon before, so I wanted to be sure to get it just right!:

And the finished piece:

The idea sketch for a little girl perched atop a car:

And the completed painting:

AND something really different for me, here's part of a more traditional portrait, which I was VERY intimidated by, but I'm kind of pleased with how it turned out.  (I wrote more about this one here.)

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work I go (though, on days like today, when I'm working on something as fun as a blonde queen bee-girl, it feels kinda silly to call it "work" !)

Hope you all have a fabulously dreamy weekend!

KJ

P.S. Is it heigh-ho or high-ho or hi-ho?  I do not know!

Adventure #96: KJ, Two Fiery Redheads, & A Quite Sullen-Looking Rapunzel

Dear You,

I just don't have words this morning, but luckily for me, they say a picture is worth a 1000 words, so this post will be worth 3000:

                  "Cut & Paste Girl Saves The Craft"

                          "Watch Me Now"

 "She Refused To Let Down Her Hair" (Rapunzel Variation #3)

You might have seen these way back here, when I posted them in assorted states of incompleteness.  I finally took them off the WIP pile and finished'em up!

Wordlessly (kind of) Yours,

KJ