kaebe

I primarily go by Remy, but Kaebe is totally fine. It's a mish-mash of my legal name that I've chosen to use for my public art persona. I pronounce it "Kay Bee" like the letters K and B, but don't really care how it's pronounced. Not that it particularly matters online. ;)

About Me

I'm a queer, 30-something year old who prefers they/them pronouns. I'm also disabled from both physical and mental chronic conditions. (Fibromyalgia, Type 2 Diabetes, and C-PTSD are the biggies atm). I'm an artist, but I am just trying to start my career. I love random facts, plants, color, art supplies, art, crystals, and living in New England. I'm pagan-ish, but don't really follow any set tradition.

My gf recently described me as Misty Day from AHS, and really, that's the best summary of me I can think of.  

I'm in desperate need of new friends and a social circle - online and off. I get along best with people who are self-aware, trying to better themselves and/or their lives, and who are weirdos like me. 


What I Write About

Lately, most of my writing has just been about daily life things. For me, that means a lot of medical junk, both physical and psychological. It also means rambling on art, art supplies, business topics, comics, interesting things I've learned, etc.

It's really important to me to maintain hope. My posts aren't always positive, and they may deal with really hard and/or triggery subject matter. But I do my best to end everything with a hopeful outlook, or to look for silver linings. 

Journal Rules

1) Don't be a dick
2) This is my space, so I reserve the right to change things
3) Comments are unscreened unless otherwise stated
4) If a post is public, feel free to link to or talk about the info elsewhere. If a post is friends locked, it doesn't go further than that post. 


NOTE: I'm not new to Dreamwidth; I just decided I wanted a fresh start with a new account. My other journal is remiel, but it's mostly f-locked. I still post there sometimes, but it's mostly very kooky spiritual woo-woo. If that's your cup of tea, feel free to follow me over there.

 

 I got all my holiday cards written and sent out! I enjoyed the process a lot more than I thought I would and think I'd like to write and send out more snail mail as a general thing. It might be something to consider with Patreon tiers for my art in the future, once I get that up and running.

That being said, if you wanted a mistletoe inspired holiday card with a skeleton on it, I still have a few left, so hit me up!

Yesterday I ordered the pigments for the Wicked Garden themed watercolor set. We'll see if they get here in time for a first pour before I leave for Texas on the 17th. I am feeling not okay with this trip, so anxiety surrounding it has become my predominant emotion.

I'm having some TMI health issues that I'd rather pretend aren't happening, but still wanted a record of it. One of the medicines last night gave me excruciating pain. I don't remember a lot of it, except it was over an hour and Z found me halfway through and held my hand while I basically writhed and sobbed and felt like I was losing my fucking mind. Never again. 

Today is trying to clean up some and start scheduling Instagram posts. I want to get the apartment in decent shape in case the landlord needs to come in while we're away, and also so we've got a nice start for the New Year. 

If I have time, I might also start laying out one of the 3 zines I want to make for Arisia. One is the actual Wicked Garden art. One is a behind-the-scenes of making it sketchbook and process and Inktober goodness. The other is a general sketchbook. Hoping to hit 3 different price tiers with them.

I've also been thinking a lot about table setup for the convention. It's hard not going overboard because I'm not sure how many conventions I'll wind up doing. This is a test run to see how I like it, how my health handles it, and if there's a general interest in my stuff. I'm thinking about making displays from chipboard, possibly using the Cricut to cut them out. We still haven't used it yet, and it terrifies me.

But I did start using the new printer! I had to for the holiday cards. It was a lot less intimidating and scary than I expected. We need to set up the continuous ink system with the new inks before I start calibrating and doing prints for the convention, though. The Red River paper just came in today.

As a side note, it seems the new diabetes medication is working. I'm getting NASTY side effects, but am learning how I can manage them. I woke up with a fasting of 156 yesterday. The lowest I'd ever seen my fasting before was 179, and it usually hovers in the 200 range, so...wow! I really hope I can get it figured out so I can stay on this one.

I have fallen hopelessly behind on messages here, but I'll get back to anyone I haven't yet!

I actually managed to get some work done today, despite Vistaprint's site constantly going up and down on the last day of their big sale. I wound up ordering 600 postcards and 20 stickers.

The postcards will be broken up into 2 sets, and sold as mini print sets. So while the upfront cost was scary and the sheer number is daunting, it's actually a really good deal.

The stickers are going to go on tins I have to order. I'm designing a small 4-color watercolor palette based on my Wicked Garden art series. I don't know if I'll actually sell any at Arisia because I'm not sure if it's a good market for it, but I'm going to try. At the very least it'll add a nice interactive element at my table. (If there's enough room for me to actually set up a small place for people to play with it; there might not be). I'll probably design some coloring pages to give out as a bonus.

Decided to hold off on the button machine. It sounds like a lot of fun and it'd be nice to have a few $1-2 items at my booth, but the upfront cost is just too much right now. 

I'm debating doing a cheaper zine sketchbook thing to go alongside my main Wicked Garden one. I can't decide if I want it to be related or not. It could be cool to have one that's a companion that goes into the process behind the pieces and plant lore, but I'm not sure if people would be interested in that. 

Thinking about nixing the jewelry for now, or if I do it stick to the plant matter ones instead of my art ones. 

I also ordered 100 sheets of Red River paper for Z and I to make our prints in-house. I'm tired of spending money I don't really have, so I really hope I manage to sell some stuff at Arisia. 

The prints will be large, 11 x 17, and convention exclusive. They'll be really good quality, but still poster prints versus fine art prints. I'm only selling the fine art prints on my site, and those will be what I show in the Art Show. I might just do a hand embellished one of a kind for the pieces I'm showing and frame them, instead of doing the plain giclees I'll offer online. 

It's so strange having so much art I'm sitting on but haven't done anything with yet. I'm not sure what I'm going to work on next. 

Z has just informed me that  if you search for "Asterion Minotaur" on Google, my old blog's the 5th result. I just tried it from my computer on incognito mode, and it was the same for me. It's so bizarre! I mean, I know not many people probably use those keywords, but still. 

 Last night I had what might have been the most horrific one I've ever had. A lot of it was run-of-the-mill, and included anxieties about tabling at my first con in January, but...

( Godawful triggery nightmare with body horror and mentions of trauma  )

So I've been a mess all day. All I could manage was playing Stardew Valley, until Y massively startled me and was very flippant and dismissive about it. I wound up shaking and crying and needing Z for a good while to calm down enough to make it back to the couch. I was super dizzy. I couldn't calm down, so he got me a lorazapam. It's helping, but mostly I want to just cry. Part of me wants to retreat to bed, but now I'm afraid of bed and sleep...again. I had just gotten that fear calmed down literally two days ago.

I needed to write this out, even though I really really didn't want to. Now I can go back to trying to forget it ever happened. We're going out to Michael's and Costco now, so hopefully the medicine will help me stay calm until we get back home. 

Two of my packages for handmade watercolors came in! It was a nice surprise on what has been a very blah day. Depression is flaring up, along with procrastination and lost meds, so...fun. Anyway, paint.


( Pic behind cut! )




The ones on the left are Florentine Green and Red Earth from Poems About You. The ones on the right are Texas Dandelion, Avocado Sienna, and Privet Indigo Fusion. The Avocado one was actually a free gift with my order, a generous half pan full!

The Poems About You one came adorably packaged, and I was super impressed with how neat the half pans were. Labelled, perfectly filled, few air bubbles. In contrast, the Texas Wild Color ones were messy, with paint spilled on the pans, and sticky. I was warned they'd be sticky, though, and don't mind the messy at all. Both styles seemed to match the branding of both companies.

They all re-wet beautifully and I am head over heels for the Dandelion one. I loved it on his store, but it's even prettier in person. 

After swatching them, I went and swatched the paints I made a couple of weeks ago. The matte ones are perfect. The mica ones need a little more work to re-wet, but still pretty good. The glitter ones...need some TLC. I'm going to have to tweak their recipe, I'm thinking up the glycerin and see if that makes them easier. I know glitter paints in general take a lot more work to re-wet, but this is ridiculous.