I was thinking of creating a blog today, and then I remembered I had one.

I have not been here in 5 years? That seems a bit crazy.

I've said it before. I have a hard time being public, but I would like to get over that. Unfortunately, I also seem to have a not-so-great memory.

For the past few years, I have mostly been making junk journals. More recently, I began making low content books on Amazon and have sold a few. I am also selling vintage jewelry on Poshmark, and I have an Etsy shop with a few graphic tee shirts. I plan to try to sell some of my handmade journals there as well as other things soon.

There seems to be a big learning curve to everything I want to do.. and my brain wants me to work slower!  I like to believe it's because I want to do too much and not that I just have lost my ability to think well.

I retired from my job a few years ago after an assault by a patient. The assault itself was not terrible, just scary how it happened so fast and why it happened. I had no broken bones, and my cuts were minor. I mainly had aches and pains that did not really kick in for a day. I've been hit before. My fingers, hands, and arms were twisted, and that seemed to trigger arthritis. It's pretty painful and makes me not want to do several things. I also lost my passion for drawing and painting, and I really want that back.  I feel like the most damage may have been to my mind. I had flashbacks of that incident ending differently and other incidents where I was hit or almost attacked haunting me. I had lots of nightmares and hallucinations. And I had crazy, crazy anger! I would go off on people, entirely out of control, much like the patient who attacked me was angry at his Treatment team leader. Unfortunately, I took the heat for him.  

One of the oddest symptoms that still lives on is my memory issues. I have a ridiculous blockage of the names of my patients and coworkers other than maybe 5 or 6 people. It's crazy! I could picture some faces. People I worked with for years and had seen just a week or two earlier are just a blur if I can remember them at all.  I can not recall their names. The woman I shared my office with, her name and face come and go. The nice nurse? A complete mystery. The doctors..no idea who they were. The treatment team I worked with had about 8 or 10 people I met with regularly. To this day, I still can't remember most of the people on the team or the patients I worked with. I was checked out for several things, but nothing explains it other than PTSD.

I do remember two people. One who took the time to tell people that I was faking my injury to go to college. I already have a master's, and I don't need to fake an injury to get another degree. And my supervisor, who I once considered a friend who made my life hell. She seemed to think of me as her personal artist. I was there to "decorate" for her and make gifts (for her) to give to others. Nothing I could do pleased her, and she complained to me about me constantly. She also insisted that I, along with a few other people, eat things.. sugary cakes, candy, donuts at our treatment team meetings, or we would not be permitted to speak. Yes, that is insane, and it is abusive. It's another story, but I feel I needed to just mention it now. She did a lot worse than that; I will have to talk about it sometime.

I saw a therapist who diagnosed me with PTSD and a pain disorder. I had a lot of pain. I went to physical therapy, which made it worse. Massage therapy made it much worse. Red light..no good. Acupuncture seemed to help a tiny bit, but.. well, in the end, it made me worse. I had to change therapists when my worker's comp ran out and saw a local guy who would fall asleep about two minutes into our session. I switched to another therapist who was older and sick with cancer. Although she seemed pretty good, she was developing some cognition issues in remembering things. She died shortly after I began seeing her. 

Despite not having a therapist now, I am feeling a little better. I feel more in control. I think I remember a lot more people, but not as many as I should at this point. Being a therapist myself, I had decided not to practice but was encouraged to maintain my credentials, which was hard to do, but I have. Hopefully, I will figure out a way to help people meaningfully soon.

If anybody read this.. wow. I don't think anybody ever looked at my blog. Congratulations. Tell me how you are doing.

This is a link to my Etsy store; feel free to tell me what is wrong with it.. there should be plenty of things to say.

Keggys Creations by KeggysCreations on Etsy

A few portraits

I probably did about 50 portraits in the past 18 months. 

Some are good, some not so much. I like these two..

Both were done in pencil. I like using a drawing kit like this one:
 https://www.amazon.com/33-piece-Professional-Art-Kit-Sketchpad/dp/B016LGT5CA/ref=sr_1_48?s=arts-crafts&ie=UTF8&qid=1483047912&sr=1-48&keywords=drawing+pencils

And I use this paper...but I typically draw on the back side of each piece.  https://www.amazon.com/Mi-Teintes-Pastel-Assorted-Colors-Fold/dp/B0024KO2RG/ref=sr_1_1?s=arts-crafts&ie=UTF8&qid=1483048049&sr=1-1&keywords=mi+tientes+paper

My Ebony. He was killed quite tragically on Christmas. He was young and healthy and super sweet. We took him in from my mother when she passed in 2013, he was about 2 years old then. I don't want to talk about how he died, and was not an obvious cause, and its just too soon to talk about it.

He had opened a gift on Christmas in the afternoon, it was a big pink cat filled with catnip. He had some fun with it and had a special dinner. He would lie on his back with his paws up on his chest, he was so happy. I thought he was off sleeping with the others. We didn't know he was missing till later.

We are all heartbroken over the loss of him. He was the youngest of our cats, the friendliest and the absolute coolest. He used to walk on you (and he is heavy) if he wanted you to feed him. He would bite your toes gently to wake you up. He would always be pushing his forehead into you to get him to pet him, or hold him. Sometimes he would run his teeth over you.  He was so sweet, so affectionate.
I tried to paint a portrait of him yesterday, and besides not being thrilled with the outcome of the portrait it was unnerving seeing what my painting was revealing. As an art therapist I felt it would be helpful for me to paint or draw him to process this loss, which seems so unreal.. but the final product is just too revealing for me to share publicly.

We will miss you Ebony. I wish you could come back to us. I can't believe you are gone so soon.

  What cann I say?

Almost two years later...

I started painting colorful animals at work. I did some for the patients and staff, mostly of elephants doing human things like sitting on benches and skating. I was asked to do a few for various people, gave them away... wish I had a picture of them. Yes I took pictures, but you know there are so many devices to take pictures with these days, and its hard to keep them orderly. So this page has a sampling of some of my colorful animals.

Pendants...

I've been trying to do these pendants for awhile and was finally able to do them among other things  this weekend. I don't get why I always feel so art deprived.

Demengted ornmaments

These are a few of the ornaments I made in the online Demented class fall 2014. 
 I finished them quickly, but photographing them took me awhile! They are made from light  bulbs, the old fashioned ones. ( Do not cut open one of the new fanged bulbs!) The picture of this first one..it has a fly hanging off the eye thing, its a very cool greenish winged fly. This flash lights up the bulb well so you can see it, but it still isn't a great picture. The eyeball has tentacles (the filament) that ensnare the fly,

This one has a Milagros hanging off the eyeball, and a key. I used a plastic chess pawn for the finial on the bottom, it worked really well.

(BTW my tree is strange looking for many reasons  ... only purple lights, and a handful of ornaments with a Santa hat as the topper. )

 

The picture above with the skeleton head is a Halloween skeleton head and the suit he is wearing is actually a metal beetle charm, looked so much like a mans suit I couldn't resist. Both are glued onto the filament.

 

This one reminds me of the one eyed pez dude I made a few years back. She however is a big breasted skeleton chick. She has a crown of some sort but .. can't see it in this picture. This one is more of a shrine meant to sit on the table.  I have to finish her base still.

 

This one is also a shrine and has the base, but is not done yet.... just chose to photograph her like this since  I can.  That is a hand hanging from the eyeball. The hand is holding a fly that is chained to the eyeball.