Stylish Blogger Award!

I was totally excited to receive this Stylish Blogger Award last week from my sweet friend and fellow clay artist, Elizabeth Gonzalez!  I was honored to have her nominate me - I've been seeing this award go around to several of my friends, and I was thrilled to be in this "club".  So, I would like to thank Elizabeth GLZ and if you aren't familiar with her work, you should take a moment to head over to her blog.  She does wonderfully happy ceramics, as well as beautiful and colorful paintings.  I have one of her prints hanging in my studio.  She is a hard worker and is making her art career move!  I can definitely admire that!!

So one of the requirements of this award is that I share 7 things about myself that you may or may not know.  This part has been hard for me, and this is why I've been putting off this post for a week now.  I wanted to come up with some super cool, witty things about myself, but I'm afraid I've found the task to be a bit daunting.  So, here goes, here's my list of random things that I try not to share here:   :)

1 - I am so very particular about how the dishwasher is loaded!  I'm going for efficiency and organization, and you better not load the knives with the sharp tips up - I don't like cutting my hand when I go to unload!
2 -  I am compelled to check my email every time I hear that ding!  I always think something good is going to come in email and I just have to check it.
3 - If we meet in person, I am so colored-oriented that I will probably notice the color of your shirt before we even get the introductions over with, and that will help me remember you later.  As in, "oh, that nice lady with the red shirt??"
4 - I'm not a huge fan of cake, but my weaknesses include coffee, soft and gooey chocolate chip cookies, and glazed donuts (Krispy Kreme is my fav, for you Americans in the southeast).
5 - I am not a bubbly morning person.  I do my best creative work in the morning, but I'm not ready to giggle and talk and be silly until I've had coffee and some breakfast.  My mother even wrote about this in my babybook.  Well, not the part about coffee.  :)
6 - I used to torture my big brother by grabbing his two chest hairs and threatening to pull them out if he didn't leave me alone.  It worked!  I was never sure if it was the pain he was afraid of, or the idea of losing his two, precious chest hairs...
7 - And I used to torture my mother by putting the brown M&Ms on our dog with the "M" side down, and then when I knew she was watching me, I'd pluck one off and pop it in my mouth.  We lived on a farm in the country and had a terrible time with ticks on the dogs, and so these M&Ms looked exactly like engorged ticks! What a terrible thing to think about your child eating!

So, there you have it!  7 big secrets that I've now shared with you all.  Now on to the rest of the requirements!  I must pass on this award to 7 other bloggers that I admire.  You may have heard of some of them already, but I am not sure who all has gotten this award already, since it has been going for a while.  I'll try to get you some new ones. :)  So, in no particular order, here we go:


I know that most of you already know about Laura and her Strategic Online Marketing blog.  But I can't pass out this award without mentioning her.  Laura and I met through Kelly Rae Robert's ecourse Flying Lessons, and she has become a really good friend in my every day life.  This girl is multi-talented in social media, marketing, PR, webdesign, sales and other stuff, and now she is starting to come into her own as an artist.  She already makes beautiful jewelry, and is learning to sketch/draw, all while upping her game as a watercolorist.

Jenny Lee Wentworth is another artist from Flying Lessons, and I love watching her grow.  The opening paragraph on her blog talks about how she feels like anybody can make art.  Her blog is called Creativity is Happiness and I agree with that!  She just sold an original painting and is completely excited by it.

Bird from a Wire is another one of my favorite blogs.  Jen is a wire and fabric artist, who also blogs about other aspects of life, and her blog is always so happy and uplifting.  I even printed out one of her posts and hung it in my studio right by my sink, where I can read little snippets of it everyday when I wash my hands.  She also just had a book published "Creative Bloom" and one day, I am going to make every single project in this book!

Kylie is a painter and mom whom I admire.  She recently had her first solo show in Australia, where she lives and she was awesome to blog about it and make the rest of us feel like we were there with her on that special day.  I've written about Kylie here before, so check her out if you haven't done so yet.  She also participated in The Sketchbook Project with me.   She is currently building a house that looks super cool and has now started working in encaustic paints and is making some awesome new pieces.  Her blog is Chasing Purple Dreams and check her out on Facebook too.

Someone new you may not have heard about is Dodeline Design.  She is another local artist I met not too long ago through a tweetup.  Sarah is young (barely out of college!) and vibrant and has her act together.  We went to lunch one day and I have to say, I am happy to know this girl.  She is going to go far with her work, and I love watching people living their dreams.

Kristina, over at Figures... in My Art and My Life is a new blog I recently started following, and I love her work.  Most of you know I love to draw/sketch, but this chic is GOOD.  Her work is amazing and I would love to own one of her pieces one day.  She doesn't even know I exist, but I wanted to share her work with you.

I love this next blog for it's down-to-earth reality of being an artist.  Whitney at This Artist's Life, write about her life as a potter and artist, point-blank and discusses the nitty gritty of it all.  Again, she doesn't know me or my work, but I wanted to share her blogging with you.  If you ever find yourself awake at 4:00 am worrying about a commission or order, then you will understand this blog.

Whew! This is a long post and I'm sorry if I got too wordy!  Perhaps this was another reason I have been putting off this post - I knew it was going to be a doozy!!  There are so many other blogs that I enjoy every week, but I wanted to try to introduce a few new ones here.  Perhaps one day in the future, I'll do a big link love list of everybody...

Have a great day!
~Kelly