Bee Kind Art Collective

Anyone going to the Seattle Pride Parade? Though I will be healing and won't be going for long, assuming everything goes well, I do hope to be going to hand out stickers for a couple hours.

Perhaps I shall run into you lovely folks and give you a free sticker or two! This will be one of them. I am off to paint the rest and try not to think about my disc replacement. 😬

For Mermay 2026! Which I very nearly let slip by with all the craziness that has gone on in my personal life.

My oldest child got married, and it was beautiful! It was work, but very much worth it for how lovely it all turned out and how much fun everyone had. Also, have been deep in preparation for a multilevel disc replacement surgery in my cervical spine in just under two weeks, plus doing everything we can to avoid shutting down our local NPO because of shady overseas asshats trying to take over our NPO name, so that means meeting lawyers we cannot afford but must somehow comeup woth the money.

Here's the stand alone poppy I did from that class from Alex Kincaide. Her little $10 week long class was worth it for sure. You learn to paint or for new ways to paint 3 or 4 flowers and the greens, then a big finished bouquet at the end and you only have to sit through mildish pitching for her longer year long class. A friend of mine ask me to do this with her, and she had never watercolored in her life. By the end she was doing great and painted right along! Her final piece turned out so well she gave it away for mother's day. So $10 well spent for sure. :)

I thought this poppy was pretty for something practice especially. This was day three. I hope you all enjoy too!

Just wrapped up a watercolor class and thought I would share some of what I learned. I love the way I learned to make poppies and adding the textures on the petals. Anyhow I thought It turned out pretty and wanted to share in case you thought it was too.

OH! Also my flower wall hasn't even made it up on to the walls yet and I sold the large daffodil painting! So exciting! Hopefully they will all sell by the time they come down :)

I hope you all have had a great week!

Here is my Wall of Flowers that is going up locally for some extra exposure. I did end up repainting the rose in the middle as I wasn't happy with the red one, but the new one turned out well. It's a pinky purple color. I'll have to take a good scan of it ad post it soon.

Anyhow, I am working on this and a little freebee box I am going to call free 'refrigerator art.' if I have things that are cute enough not to be thrown away, but something I don't want/can't to sell, I'm going to put in this decorated box, and make a deal with some places to put it out so I can give these little art pieces away so people can decorate their 'fridge' with it. :) Like this little guy, I can't sell this, but how cute is this?

Happy Earth Day All! I really do feel like I should have painted the whole thing on fire, but alas, I have hope we will somehow pull our heads out of our collective asses and start caring and reclaiming the health of our planet. For OUR sake, if nothing else; My goodness. *sigh*

Until then I will continue to work in my community and I will bask in all of the wonderful animal and nature videos that remind me just how magnificent our planet truly is and how worthwhile it is to save her, even if just to give us a place to lay our weary heads at night.

Life is definitely what happens while you are making other plans. lately A) I found out what happens if I accidently fall asleep and don't taken my CVS/migraine controlling medicine. B) I accidently broke my TV from just wiping the dog drool off, C) and haven't posted in two weeks because of wedding planning/being sick/and catching on on real life.

I made these cute warm ups for the easter holiday, but never got to make anything substantial. There was the immediate and harsh backlash from missing a single dose of my medicine which took days to recover from, then the actual holiday weekend I was out at the Market (Pikes Market) looking for flowers for my kiddos wedding coming up soon. We spent the day looking for flowers and making practice flower arrangements for the wedding.

So here's some of what's been going on. I hope you all are hanging in there!

Last week I made these fun little punny ecards for a long distance friend who needed a pick me up. I thought I'd share here just in case there was someone in your life you needed to see them too. Something to do with wasted doodle art and put it to good use. If only Tumblr could rise up and use it's collective chaos power for good, lol. I hope to see these everywhere!

Oh Goodness, my first ask! I could be easy and just say stuff like "my family," but that would be boring, so here we go in no particular order:

I Love Love Love hearing my husband's laugh all the way across the house when he has encountered something that has really tickled his funny bone. - just love his various laughs! I swear just hearing his laugh somedays works better than laughing myself.

Being outside, unless the weather is just absolutely miserable, always makes me happy. And frankly, even then, if I have the right clothes I'm okay. The outdoors is my happy place. I find even opening the window/shades/blinds and letting a little outside in can suffice when I can't go out. This is rather vague you say... yes it is because I found it doesn't matter. Outside is outside. Working in the flowerbeds or hiking in a trail is all the same to me, so long as it gets me outside, I enjoy it all the same.

Color - color makes me very very happy. Color has always had a strong pull on me. I had been one to keep a little box of treasures tucked under my bed as kid and in it I would keep paint swatches, sometimes actual little pieces of dried acrylic paint, and little bobbles I held onto because of the color or the color combo I wanted to save for some weird reason. I especially like Blue, Green, and Yellow.

Dogs - I cannot have a list of things that make me happy that doesn't include dogs. There is something about a dog to me that is irreplaceable. They are an immense source of happiness for me. My dogs are my family, the same as my kids or my husband, I love them just as much. I mourn them just as much. For better or worse, I need them in my life and I cannot imagine walking through my life without a four legged companion to go with me.

Seeing what caring, kind, thoughtful, civic minded, loving, critical thinkers I have raised. Seeing them in action makes me super happy. As a parent when you see your grown children act on the things you tried to teach them when they were little, and that translates into positive community action now, that makes me super happy. My kids are stepping up and stepping in for good however they can in their communities. They are even helping me start an NPO so we can work on some of the issues in our area. So my family makes me happy yes, but seeing that my kids want to make the world a better place rather than just coasting along makes me super happy.

Well, for better or worse, It is official. I cannot put it off any longer - I have my multilevel cervical disc replacement surgery scheduled for June this year. 😬

I will be getting fancy new discs, all the bone spurs pushing on my spinal cord removed and nerve canals cleaned out to help with the nerve squishing that's happening and the reason for the RFA's. To put it mildly, I am both excited at the prospect of it working and at least putting an end to the degradation and worsening of the current symptoms and terrified of the consequences of it failing added pain, more symptoms or worse - being paralyzed. SO! it is going to be a busy summer - My oldest is getting married, first art showing, part of my spine is being replaced, and bonus good news - I finally got my doctors to put me back on my old meds and I haven't thrown up in 3 weeks!

That's my news - I sure hope all of you folks are hang in and hang on. It seems like everywhere we turn something crazy is happening. Though we all are finding ways to keep the normal in the everyday lives we lead. Maybe a meal, a smile, a scroll. Please find some time to really like something, enjoy it today. Appreciate that it is in the world. Thank it's maker if is something tasty to eat or maybe a treat for your eyes insead, but take a moment, unhurried, and know that it's okay to just be with it for a minute or two and enjoy it. Happy Day All!

🍀Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Posting the daffodils I have been painting, as it is snowing all day today so far, and probably ruining all our beautiful daffodils. I Haven't ventured out in the yard to look yet. We have about 4-5 inches on my back deck rails, and probably 2-3 inches on the front lawn that I can see from the window. Last several years now, spring hits with warmer weather then we get some last big cold/snowy blast that kills/stuns the blooms. So sad. then all the buds have to recover or the bush has to regrow so it's late.

I'm trying to decide if the dogs and I are getting fully suited up and walking in the falling snow, or staying inside and making it a warm beverage day. Their poor ears and feet are already chilly and we haven't even gone anywhere yet, which makes me lean toward not wanting to take them out and making them cold. On the other hand, I know science is cool, and they probably aren't as cold as I worry they are and they should experience the wonder of the falling snow too... even if it's a short walk. *sigh* I sometimes over agonize over what to do for the health and wellbeing of my dogs. I take my caretaker-ship/conservatorship pretty seriously I guess. I try anyway.

Speed Paint some daffodils with me! Since painting the crocus the other day, I have been painting some daffodils and I filmed one set to give myself some practice. I still suck at it, but you might like to watch nonetheless.

Also, for you watercolorists out there NOT using frixion pens to draw out your design first... I, I just don't even know what to tell you other than no more pencil marks when you don't want them! Seriously... no. more. pencil. marks. Wanna change your design mid way? No problem, because the heat gun takes care of the marks for you. These markers are so cool!

Taking inspiration from the daily walks with the dogs. The crocus and daffodils are everywhere, and it's been so lovely to see!

It's been really busy around here and a couple a big changes in medication for me over the past few weeks have meant huge changes in how I've felt over all. Just like all the spring bulbs blooming, I feel like life is coming back to me. Hopefully it's a sustained change, and now I can just focus on getting over being mad that they (my doctors) didn't go back to this medication 5 years ago when I first started asking for it. And the fact they have been gaslighting me they the other medicine 'was' and 'should have been working just as well'. Let me just say - it was not working just as well. Crazy, just crazy to me. That aside, I am feeling so much better and not waking up as sick every morning which just makes every day go better and better.

Hang in there to all those chronic illness warriors (yes, I said it - warriors), just managing our freaking medical staff is a full time job here in the U.S. Not sure about other parts of the world, but here, being chronically ill just means an automatic fight with insurance, and healthcare clinics and hospitals, work, and just getting by and trying to find accommodations. We do not set up our society in a way to care for those that need it without a fight.

Being sick sucks and managing it sucks even more. So take a short breather, look at some pretty crocus, count to 10 and know you are not alone as you manage whatever illness you are battling.

Well, it's been a minute. I have definitely not been spreading joy as previously indented. I have honestly not been doing much other than surviving and the bare minimum, which I guess we all have to do sometimes. I am hoping I can reemerge with the spring and have some umph back soon. I just learned how to use Adobe Illustrator/Affinity to make repeating patterns. I made this crappy little practice pattern from some flowers I made on a postcard a few years back. I say crappy because I took NO time to make sure it was actually all distributed well, etc. It was more to make sure I understood the mechanics of it, and I did! Now I can make fabric, wrapping paper, and so many other cool things with patterns and matchy matchy coordinates. If you like fabric and colors, it's fun stuff. If you know you know.

I'm excited to make more patterns and 'collections' for fabric like on Spoonflower and Patternbank. Until then, more practice and more art.