Cleaning your horse grooming brushes is very important, but can be such a pain. Soaking, scrubbing, rinsing, drying- it’s not a chore I usually look forward to! However, my best friend and I recently started making brush-cleaning fizzy bombs that contain natural ingredients that don’t leave residue and make the process a lot easier! It’s almost fun now to clean my brushes! Below is a video of me cleaning my grooming gear with one of my favorite scents of our brush fizzies. Watch the video below!
Cleaning your brushes regularly can extend the life of the brush, and let’s face it, horse stuff is expensive and we need to make what we do have last as long as possible. A clean brush also cuts down the time you spend on grooming, because you’re not depositing dirt from the brush bristles back onto the horse. Also, certain skin conditions can be spread by dirty brushes, so you need to clean them to prevent that (especially if you’re sharing brushes between horses, which is not an ideal situation, but I understand that sometimes you don’t have a set of brushes for each horse and have to use communal brushes).
If you follow me on social media, you’ve seen my new series of horses I’ve been working on this year – Birthstone Horses. These are horses with coloring based on the birthstone associated with each month, and they also are bordered on two sides with sprigs of the monthly flower as well. I’m so happy with how well these designs are being received, and I wanted to introduce the next four horses to my dear readers. So, read on to see some new Birthstone Horses and to read about the properties of each stone and flower.
Traditionally a stone of priests and kings, the sapphire symbolizes purity and wisdom. This stone was once thought to guard against evil and poison, and it was believed that a venomous snake placed in a vessel made of it would die. Considered one of the finest of all colorful gemstones, the sapphire features in Asian, European, and Near Eastern mythology, history books, and religious texts. The name of this stone originates from the Greek sappheiros, which means “precious stone”. Many people believed the sapphire could cure physical ailments, especially eye infections, headaches, ear ache, and thyroid problems. In ancient Greece and Rome, royalty wore blue sapphires because they believed the stone would protect the wearer from the evil intentions of their enemies.
Click the photo to buy a print of this work!
The Morning Glory is the flower of September and of 11th wedding anniversaries. This flower blooms and dies within a single day. In the Victorian flower meanings, they signify love, affection, and mortality. In Chinese folklore, they represent a single day for lovers to meet. The flowers blossom in the morning and die by afternoon or nightfall, making it representative of the sometimes fleeting nature of affection. The vine produces new flowers each day during its growth season, representing the renewable nature of love.
Opal (October)
The birthstone for October is the Opal, whos name was derived from the Sanskrit upala, meaning “precious stone”, and later from the Greek Opallios, meaning “to see a change of color.” For a long time, Opal was believed to be a stone that brings bad luck. This unfortunate reputation and myth is attributed to Sir Walter Scott and his 1829 novel “Anne of Geuerstein”. The public took a part of the novel where an Opal’s color was destroyed after coming into contact with a drop of holy water to be a warning that the stone would bring bad luck in real life. This myth destroyed the European opal market for almost 50 years, causing the market to crash within months of the novel’s publication. Before this, however, in medieval times, all blond maidens wanted a necklace made of Opal because it was believed the stone would keep their hair from fading or darkening. The opal was also believed to make its wearer invisible at will. The opal was a symbol of fidelity and assurance among the ancients, and became associated with emotional religious prayer. It was believed to have healing properties against illness of the eyes, and that it would also make the wearer of an Opal amulet immune to disease and increase the powers of the eyes and mind.
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Calendula, also known as pot Marigold, Holligold, Bull’s Eyes, and Mary’s Gold, is the flower of October. It also bears the folk name of Summer’s Bride because the head of the plant turns as the sun moves across the sky. Because of this, Calendula has strong symbolism tied to the sun. In the garden, Calendula repels insects, which gives it a protective meaning. The petals of the Calendula are edible, so when you want to take in the energy of this flower you can toss it into salad or soup! Healers in the Middle Ages carried Calendula as a talisman to protect them from the plague. In India, this flower is among the most sacred. It represents thankfulness, excellence, and serenity. Calendula can be found adorning holy statues in India like living necklaces.
Topaz (November)
For over 2000 years, the Topaz has been treasured and appreciated. Though Topaz comes in many colors, it is the golden-yellow version that is associated with November. Topaz is said to bring prosperity and happiness into its owner’s lives. It is known as the bringer of abundance, and also has a reputation for promoting good health and alleviating stress. It is said the stone has a relaxing effect and may help people keep calm under pressure and help you think straight. The stone is said to aid in visualization and the manifestation of your goals and dreams. Topaz was associated with the sun god Ra in ancient times. In India, a Topaz worn just above the heart promised beauty, intelligence, and long life.
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As early as the 15th century BC, the Chrysanthemum appeared in Chinese writings and was used as an herbal remedy. The boiled roots of the flower were believed to cure headaches, and the sprouts and petals were eaten in salads. The Chinese city of Chu-Hsien was named after the flower, and the name literally means “Chrysanthemum City”. Buddhist monks took the Chrysanthemum to Japan in 400 AD. Soon after, it was adopted as the emperor’s crest and official seal. Every year there is a national Chrysanthemum day, which is also called the Festival of Happiness. The Chrysanthemum blooms in the fall, signifying joy and beauty despite the oncoming Winter. Victorians used the flower to show friendship and to wish others well. In China, the chrysanthemum is traditionally offered to the elderly as they symbolize long life as well as good luck.
Turquoise (December)
Since the days of Ancient Egypt, turquoise has been known throughout the world and in high demand. Turquoise was one of the first gemstones ever mined, as far back as 6000 BC. It has been used for thousands of years in jewelry, especially by the Ancient Egyptians. Today, the Native Americans, especially the Zuni and Navajo peoples, produce the best pieces in the United States. The Zuni believe that the stone protects from demons. The Navajo believe that this blue stone falls from the sky. Apache warriors wore turquoise in the belief that it improved their hunting abilities. It has also been seen as a symbol of good fortune and success, and is believed to relax the mind and protect its wearer from harm. In particular, Turquoise rings are thought to keep away evil spirits.
Click the picture to buy a print of this work!
The holly plant, now used primarily to decorate for Christmas, was considered to be sacred by the Druids. The Druids regarded the plant as a symbol of fertility and eternal life and was thought to have magical powers. Cutting down a holly tree was said to bring bad luck, but hanging holly in the home was believed to bring good luck and protection. Holly was also thought to protect the home against lightning strikes. Christians adopted the tradition of hanging holly from the Druids, Celts, and Romans, and its symbolism changed to reflect Christian beliefs. Today, Christians believe the red berries symbolize the blood of Jesus, and the spiky leaves symbolize the crown of thorns placed on Jesus’ head before he died on the cross.
And that, dear reader, is the end of the Birthstone Horses series! I loved working on this series, researching the different stones and plants, and using new techniques to render these beautiful horses! I learned so much about colored pencils doing this series. One of the things I love most about doing art is figuring out how to tell a story with a static picture, and this series was a challenge but also so rewarding to work on!
Aquamarine is now available as this month’s coloring page for my Patreon Supporters in the $5+ tiers! You can get this month’s and all previous month’s coloring pages by signing up to be a Patron!
The year was 1993, it was nearly summer and the weather was starting to warm up. I was ten years old and was looking forward to a summer of relaxation, bike riding, and spending time at my friends’ houses. One of my friends at this time had a pool, and we were celebrating the end of school and a nice warm day by swimming and hanging out on the back deck, talking and just generally enjoying the day.
I remember, while we were out on the deck wrapped in towels at some point in the day, seeing that one of the neighbors back behind my friend’s backyard had their charcoal grill going. They didn’t seem to be cooking anything though, because the flames were quite high, so they must’ve been burning something. I lived in Baltimore City at this time, so seeing open fires in backyards wasn’t exactly common, and I think that’s why I noticed the high flames in the grill and still remember them to this day.
A few days later I began developing an extremely itchy rash across parts of my face, the backs of my hands, and the bottoms of my legs. It didn’t take long for my parents to realize that I’d somehow contracted Poison Ivy. I hadn’t been in any wooded areas lately, so we eventually came to the conclusion that my friend’s neighbor must have been burning poison ivy to get rid of it, and the wind blew the smoke across the yards and that’s how I came into contact with it!
“Poisonous” 2- Poison Ivy
The next week or so were MISERABLE. I had poison ivy all over the right side of my face, including on my eyelid and INSIDE my ear. My eye swelled up to the point where I couldn’t open it, and I was covered in an itchy rash that kept oozing, so I spent most of my time dabbing at myself. I took baths in every poison-ivy remedy that could be purchased or home-made. Eventually, the rash on my face got so bad and was making me so miserable that my mom ended up wrapping my head in gauze and bandages, partly so that I couldn’t scratch and partly so that I wouldn’t have to dab at the oozing rash all the time. I looked like I’d been in some sort of horrible car accident!
Part of the reason why I remember this childhood incident so well, though, is because I was still recovering from this poison ivy run-in weeks later when the first Jurassic Park movie came out. We’d been looking forward to seeing it for months, and even the fact that I wasn’t fully recovered from my rash wasn’t going to stop us from going to the theater. At the time I was still itchy, but the rash was looking much better. However, my eyelid was still pretty swollen and I couldn’t open my eye because my eyelashes were literally glued shut from all the oozing the rash had done.
I remember sitting in the movie theater, trying to watch Jurassic Park, and only being able to see half the movie because my one eye wouldn’t open! What a horrible experience it was! I sat there during the movie and picked at my eyelashes until I got to the point where I could finally get my eye open and enjoy the entire movie instead of just watching the left side of it. Definitely a terrible but memorable childhood story!
Jurassic Park is still one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, by the way. And this story is why I chose to include Poison Ivy in my “Poisonous” series! I steer clear of this plant now whenever I see it because I do not ever want to go through that again. Don’t burn poison ivy, people!
Still the best character in Jurassic Park, fight me
Have you seen my merch on Amazon yet?
Birthstone horse shirts are available on Amazon! You can get February-October’s designs on a variety of fits and colors while taking advantage of your Amazon Prime benefits! I got to see one of these shirts in person just yesterday and I am BLOWN AWAY by the quality. The print looks amazing and the shirt itself is high-quality. I definitely recommend getting a shirt for yourself or someone you know who loves horses through my Amazon shop if you want the best feeling shirt ever!
I will be adding more shirts to Amazon as I can, however, the way that this program works is different from other t-shirt storefronts I have. With Amazon, you have only so many design “slots”, and as you sell more shirts you rank up and get more slots. I am currently on the lowest level and only have 10 design slots, so I can’t put up all the months until I open up more slots. This means I have to get more people to buy shirts on Amazon! So if you know someone who would love one of these designs, please share the link with them! I need to sell 6 more shirts before I can get to the next tier, so there’s still a ways to go but I know we can do it.
We went to the PA Horse Expo yesterday for a few hours and had a great time! Unfortunately, I’ve also come down with a cold and am feeling pretty crap today, so I’m going to keep this blog post short and sweet, so please enjoy a few photos that I took at the Expo in the gallery below.
I’ve been an artist since I was very young. My mom tells a story about me as a very young child, watching her paint ceramics, and wanting to paint my own. She gave me a paintbrush, a cup of water, and a rubber duck that I “painted”, and apparently that worked just fine until I realized that things change color when you paint them!
Growing up, I was constantly drawing and writing. I was constantly doing something creative, including doodling on the margins of my school papers. Drawing and writing as just always been something I’ve done. I like to keep my hands busy, and I love to tell stories.
Making a pretty picture is great, but I also like for there to be another layer to my pieces. I like to start a conversation, spark curiosity, and encourage learning with what I create. Part of the reason I began creating the Horses Of The World was not only so that I could learn more about horses by drawing, but also to introduce other people to some of the breeds they may not have heard of before. When I talk to people in person or at shows, they love to hear about the Quagga, or about the Heihe, or random tidbits about other breeds I’ve researched. And I love hearing people tell me things about horses that I don’t know, too! Now with my Birthstone Horses and the other series I have in the works, I get to do more research and connect with other horse lovers over gems, flowers, birthdays, and favorite colors.
Creating art also helps me to channel my anxiety and depression. Art, writing, and story-telling have always helped me work through my emotions, my worries, my dreams, my hopes, and my fears. Whatever I’m feeling, I can channel it through my art. I am a very introverted, internal-focused person, and creativity has always helped me process what I’m feeling and get it out instead of holding it inside.
Are you an artist? What role does your chosen form of art have in your life?
Have you seen my merch on Amazon yet?
Birthstone horse shirts are available on Amazon! You can get February-October’s designs on a variety of fits and colors while taking advantage of your Amazon Prime benefits! I got to see one of these shirts in person just yesterday and I am BLOWN AWAY by the quality. The print looks amazing and the shirt itself is high-quality. I definitely recommend getting a shirt for yourself or someone you know who loves horses through my Amazon shop if you want the best feeling shirt ever!
I will be adding more shirts to Amazon as I can, however, the way that this program works is different from other t-shirt storefronts I have. With Amazon, you have only so many design “slots”, and as you sell more shirts you rank up and get more slots. I am currently on the lowest level and only have 10 design slots, so I can’t put up all the months until I open up more slots. This means I have to get more people to buy shirts on Amazon! So if you know someone who would love one of these designs, please share the link with them! I need to sell 6 more shirts before I can get to the next tier, so there’s still a ways to go but I know we can do it.
All profits will go toward our dream of buying a trailer so we can take our horses on adventures, as well as toward feed, hay, and other supplies we need for them.
This blog post isn’t the one I wanted to write today. It’s not the topic I put on my monthly calendar to write for today. To be honest, I don’t even feel like writing a blog today, and with as terrible as my week has been I very much thought about just not posting a blog at all. But then I decided against it, because I really want to make this blogging thing a regular activity. I have fun writing, I have fun updating this blog and hearing from those who take the time to read what comes out of my keyboard.
But I confess… I’m feeling very depressed the past few days. It’s not been a great week and I want to just curl up in bed and sleep for a few days and not have to deal with anything. But I can’t do that, because I was pretty much in that state all last year and it was awful and I’m trying not to get like that again.
The bad week started out with me getting back from a trip to Milwaukee and the next morning I had to take my husband to Urgent Care because he was throwing up and couldn’t even keep water down. The urgent care diagnosed him with a GI bug and gave him medicine and a note for work for him to be out again on Wednesday. Fast forward to Wednesday, and Byron hears from the temp agency he’s been working with on this job that the company he’s been at for almost 4 months now is letting him go. No warning, no indication of anything being wrong beforehand. He was told that the reasons were that he “wasn’t catching on fast enough” and “wasn’t taking enough initiative”. He had never been given any feedback beforehand about anything other than the company loving him. We were certain that they were going to hire him on full-time when they could in the next few weeks, so this was a complete blind-side.
Last year, I lost my job in January and Byron lost his in March. We spent the next few months in survival mode, not sure if we were going to suddenly become homeless. We sold possessions, I walked dogs, cleaned houses, pet-sat, and did anything else we could think of to keep afloat. Now I feel like that cycle is starting all over again and I just don’t know if I can take it.
Tomorrow is my 37th birthday and I just don’t care. If I didn’t have a shift at the co-op then I wouldn’t even leave the house. I can’t handle another year like last year. I’m going to try really hard to keep blogging and to keep doing art through this, because being creative is a great outlet for me, but sometimes depression makes it really hard for me to work on anything at all.
Anyway… I guess there’s not really a point to this other than for me to whine and vent a bit. Sorry it’s not a more positive or interesting blog post.
I’ve been using Print-On-Demand t-shirt services for a while as a way to put my artwork on shirts and other items. I love these sites because they allow me to offer more items to my audience, without me having to rent out a storage unit to keep all those items on-hand. With Print-On-Demand (POD) services, I can offer a wider range of merchandise without having to take the financial risk of having a bunch of products that no one wants. Also, I live in a small apartment with no storage, so mass-producing shirts or other large items would mean I’d need to rent additional space to keep those items. So POD just makes sense from a market testing and also a logistical standpoint for me at this point in time!
Recently I’ve been making shirt designs of my Birthstone Horses designs and I decided to order two sample shirts: one from TeeSpring, and one from Amazon. Below are my observations of each brand and a comparison of the two shirts.
Left – TeeSpring; Right – Amazon
TeeSpring
So, full disclosure, I have had the TeeSpring shirt for a few weeks longer so it’s been through the washer and dryer twice and the Amazon one just arrived yesterday. Right away though, there’s some big differences. Even though both shirts are an XL, the Amazon shirt is much longer and wider than the TeeSpring one. The print on the Amazon shirt is larger, clearer, and more saturated than the TeeSpring one, as well.
I paid an extra $4 for faster shipping from TeeSpring, but my shirt still took about 3 weeks to arrive.
TeeSpring
One thing that I noticed as soon as I first got the TeeSpring shirt was that the print was a bit “fuzzy”. My copyright information under the Violets in the design is very hard to read in this design. It’s also a little bit washed out, despite that I darken the images slightly before submitting them to the t-shirt companies to accommodate this.
Here’s a better image of the TeeSpring print, including the blurry copyright info.
This shirt blank from TeeSpring is Hanes, Made in China. The other color shirts on TeeSpring may be different brands and different countries of origin, but this is what the tag says on the shirt that I got from them.
My biggest issue with the TeeSpring shirt is that it’s VERY see-through. You can see my hand straight through the fabric. I know that white shirts tend to be a little more sheer than darker colors, but I don’t feel like it should be THIS transparent.
Merch By Amazon
Amazon
Now on to the Amazon shirt! I chose the light blue color for this design because I thought it made the purple tones in the design really pop, and I totally love that I made that decision. This shirt looks great! I did make some minor changes to this design between the time I ordered the TeeSpring shirt and this one. This version has the copyright information moved slightly, and a white stroke around the text instead of black. As before, this shirt is wider and longer than the TS one, but it also hasn’t been washed yet and I can’t find any info about if it’s a pre-shrunk blank or not. So we’ll see how it goes after I wash it!
I have Amazon Prime, so I ordered my shirt on a Sunday and it arrived on Tuesday. If you have Prime benefits, you can get all of my designs with 2-day delivery!
The light blue blank from Amazon is by Port & Company and is made in Honduras. Again, the other colors might be different brands and different countries, but the light blue XL Unisex fit is this company.
The Amazon shirt is not nearly as sheer as the TeeSpring one! My hand is still slightly visible, but not nearly as much as the white shirt.
Conclusion
Overall, I feel like the shirt blanks from Amazon are higher quality. The design is printed clearer and more true-to-color as well, making the shirt look better. The print is much larger, so if you like shirts with smaller printed areas, go with TeeSpring instead. But if you like a big, bold print, go for the Amazon shirt.
I’ve seen two of the Amazon shirts in person- the one I photographed for this blog post and one that my best friend ordered, and both of those I thought the actual t-shirt fabric was thicker and felt higher quality than the TeeSpring version.
The big drawback of Amazon is that, at the moment, I am severely limited to how many products and designs I can have. So I only have Unisex, Fitted, and Youth t-shirts available of February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, and October. On TeeSpring I can make all my Birthstone Horses available and have them on Unisex shirts, fitted shirts, and tank tops at the moment. Once I unlock more space on Amazon, I can offer more designs and increase my product line to include other shirts, including sweatshirts and hoodies.
So, if you like a clearly printed and saturated design on a thicker shirt, go with the Amazon link. If you like a smaller print to the shirt or want a tank top, go to TeeSpring. If you need the shirt for a gift and need it fast, go with Amazon if you have Prime because you can get delivery in two days.
Shirts are comparably priced on both websites, and I get roughly the same commission per-shirt on each one. However, I still need to sell 6 shirts on Amazon in order to be able to upload more designs and products, so if you don’t care either way and want my personal recommendation, go with Amazon!
