CATS X 3

In a kind of odd moment as I sat glomping my lunch a couple days ago, I looked out my window to see my neighbor’s cats sunning themselves on the window sill, and they just looked so happy.

Have you ever wished you had your own safe windowsill where you could relax and be totally unbothered, and you were able to just lie there peacefully in the sun? I sure have.

Here is the same image, painted in different colors. I’m planning to make stickers of the cats, and silk scarves of the entire image. Stay tuned – I’m in the process of opening a store so it’ll be easy to get what you want, lickety-split!
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Cats x 3
© Angela Treat Lyon 2024

GENTLE REMINDER: YOU ARE UNIQUE!

No one else can possibly do what you do.
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They may do something similar, but what you do has your breath within it, has your dreams behind it, and has your signature energy inside it.
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There are days when I wonder, myself, why do I do what I do?
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And then the Voice inside my mind says, “Angela, you have a mission, and no one else can do what you do, how you do it. Each thing you do is meant to be seen by specific people – even if it’s 900 years from now. So stop it with the self-pity and just go have fun making cool stuff. No one can even imitate what you do. So get to it!”
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Well. OK then.
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You Are Unique!
© Angela Treat Lyon 2024

WHY AREN’T THEY BITING?

My newest scarf! It’s 26″ square, rich colors on a lovely pure silk charmeuse – I love it!

A friend told me about how he’d gone fishing, and actually watched as the fish gathered around his hook and bait and, laughing all the way to town, didn’t bite all day! He never could figure out why they did that, because the next day they took the bait like crazy. How weird is that! So this is to celebrate the no-bite day!

Let me know if you’d like one of these!
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Fish Bait
© Angela Treat Lyon 2024

JUST ONE CAT? NEVER!!!

I just got this sample in the mail – it’s a 12″ square kind of plaque thing.
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It’s printed on a 1/8″ board, has a satin mat finish, wonderful rich color – and a twiney thing to hang it with! I’m thinking this would make a cool Christmas gift, yes? Want one? Contact me (see contact page HERE)!
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© Angela Treat Lyon 2024

SAFETY EVEN AS THE STORM RAGES

Very smoky here today – hard to see or breathe. Not fun at all.

This image is how I feel about you. I’m so fortunate to have your loving support. It’s been such an emotional rolly-coasty this week!

Huge gratitude for all of you who are envisioning me safe – I really appreciate that – it’s very precious, indeed. I have felt vulnerable before, but never like I have this past week.

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and I’LL BE THERE, BE THERE, BE THERE . . .

This last week has been such hell. 119 degree heat, the threat of the big California Park Fire being within 3 miles of my house, the smoky air burning our eyes – I don’t remember any August here in Chico being so damned hot, every single day.

And not having a car! When I gave up driving 5 years ago I never dreamed I’d regret it! What with friends being out of town or not reachable, I have felt so vulnerable.

If I’d had to evacuate, I’d have to walk! Can’t you just see a 78-year old woman stumbling out of town leaning on her walker, back-pack on, slippers on her feet? That would be me! LOL!

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WHISTLING A HAPPY TUNE

Isn’t this how it oughta be? Friends getting together, hanging out, playing, singing, dancing, celebrating life, in all its beauty? I say yes!

I’m completely overwhelmed and exhausted by all the upset, violence, anger and fear coating every aspect of our lives.

How did we get here?

Somehow, we gave ourselves permission to spew gouts of hatred everywhere. Not to mention the raping, killing, maiming, and destroying – not just of humans or material property, but the world itself. It’s disgusting.

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WORKING on the 2025 Calendar

I got a wild hair and started working on next year’s calendar!

(Like I don’t already have plenty to do!!!)! Here’s the December page – waddya think? I love it! I left it crude this time (no image trace). I like the rawness.

I’ll let you know when the calendar is ready for a pre-sale.
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© Angela Treat Lyon 2024

A HAPPY PURPLE WEDDING

With this ring, and yellow flower, and bunny dance, and birdies, and meeces, and ferrets, and sun, and pink and red flowers, and the sun, I thee wed!

Sometimes ya just gotta shed the got-to list and do the fun list. This wasn’t on any list! But I’m feeling low energy today, and it was the perfect pickmeup to do this design.

(Check out everybody’s nail polish – put on exclusively for the wedding celebration!)
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© Angela Treat Lyon 2024

RACOON CATCH & RELEASE

Can’t keep our friends out of the water!
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Let them go! Let them go! Here’s another one with those bright colors. I’ve been hesitant to show the drawings with these garish colors, bcz from what I’ve seen elsewhere, people seem to like the more muted colors. How wrong have I been?
I love the faces on this one – everyone is so happy!
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© Angela Treat Lyon 2024

I LOVE YOU!

I don’t care if you love someone of the opposite sex, the same sex, no sex, weird sex, pronoun sex, or any sex I forgot to mention.

I don’t care what rules any outside agency sets up.

I don’t care what your mother, father, sister, brother, aunty, uncly or other family member believes about love. Or your teacher, doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief.

Love is love is love.

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“I Can’t!”

Here’s a little inspiration for you if you are worried, anxious, scared, or having a desperately hard time. Or maybe it’s for someone you know.

I’ve heard you say, “I failed.”
I’ve heard you say, “I’m so tired.”
And “I’m so afraid.”

I know it’s hard when you’re exhausted and it feels like you have failed somehow.
And you’re so afraid of ‘what might happen if . . . .’

You have to remember: you have done your best, this whole time. What do you think you ‘should’ have been doing? Or ‘should’ be doing even better?

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What Do You Do to Come Back to Your Senses?

Do you ever start something and end up doing something completely and utterly radically different? I fought it, but that’s what happened today.

FISHIES GALORE

I started out tonight intending to write a story about a disastrous sailing adventure I had when I was 15.

Then I started thinking about how, in the past three or four weeks, people who have said they would meet me at an agreed-upon time either never showed, or were an hour or more late (pet peeve!!!).

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Can You Really Make Good Money with Your Art?

If you are not an artist, stick around, because I’m going to show you how you can help your artist friends. If you ARE an artist – well! See what you can do!

Drawing through the night

A couple months ago, I enrolled in a comprehensive 8-week art business course called Leverage Your Art, taught by 7-figure artist, Stacie Bloomfield.

To say the course has had a significant impact on my life is just a bit of an understatement! EVerything in my business has changed as a result – I couldn’t be more thrilled.

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What Do You Do if Someone Steals Your Art?

A fellow artist asked me: You’ve sent a company your images to see if they’d like to carry your line on their products. How do you know they won’t steal your artwork and put it on their products and sell them without your knowledge?

Energy thrills through my hands as I make art

My first thought was, in that case, either the company will go out of business after getting a rotten reputation for being design thieves, or they are so big it will take Godzilla to get them to stop.

There have been many cases that I’m aware of where artists did, in fact, get art/design stealers to stop. If you feel confident that you can get them to stop, go for it, confront them. I know of one person who has gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars in recompense. (You do have to be set up and prepared – more on that below.)

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What Makes Your Presentations So Special?

I want you to be out front, SEEN, and appreciated. Here are seven tips you can employ right now that will help you be more brilliant than you already are.

Podcasting to the Millions

Are you writing, podcasting, or delivering webinars?

Amongst a million others, how are your presentations so brilliant that people remember you and your ideas for years?

What if they were so bright people couldn’t help but want to read and listen to them, wondering what golden nuggets they will find?

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Healing/Creating Hands

Source energies curl and furl in my palms. They remain there until I start working on something. Sometimes they churn and make my hands tingle. As soon as I begin to focus, the energy passes through to my fingers.

Way back in the 60s when I was a potter living in Hawaii, my logo was a hand with a spiral in the palm. It symbolized my intention to bring forth Divine energy through my art. I made it into a stamp I’d press into the bottom of my pots.

Yesterday, I was wondering how I could continue the art-inspiration series I’ve been writing. The image of that hand popped into my mind.

It was perfect, since the last 2 designs I’d made used hands and spirals. But this one had a different feel to it. It made me think of all the healing training I’ve gone through.

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Be A Fierce Bear about Your Art

You have to know the value of what you create. To me, whether it’s my visual art or my writing, it is the Divine Voice speaking with my voice and hands. Its value is incalculable.
Never let anyone dissuade you from regarding your art as valuable.

When my kids were little, they’d join me in my studio. They drove me nuts. They’d wander around, squeezing the clay, opening and slamming shut cabinet doors, sticking little fingers in the powdered glaze materials, dragging out my tools and doofing around with them, and opening and closing the top of my smaller kiln.

Finally, I sat them down at the big middle table and showed them coil and slab building, and later, how to glaze, decorate, and fire their creations. They got to it and proved themselves damn good little artists.

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What Inspires You?

I was taught that “great artists wait for inspiration to come to them, and then they create.” So obviously, if I wanted to become a great artist, I needed to wait for inspiration to come. Well that’s just total BS.

Bringing Light to the World

Smart me! I didn’t believe it. Life moves faster than that. And I don’t wait well.

I have a hard time with old adages. I question EVERYthing. Old, in these times, means either venerated and sure as can be; or outdated, worn out and no longer applicable, even destructive.

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Reading Time

My buddies love it when I read to them!

Reading Time

We gather together and sit on my bed with piles of snacks, and they help me choose which books to read. We love the Mysterious Island, and all of Nathan Lowell’s sci-fi stories.

I have to be careful of Kitty, though — she likes to lean over my shoulder and ruffle the pages so I lose my place. Naughty Kitty!

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Practice

I discovered that practice meant giving up trying to achieve perfection. What it really gave me was a calm, quiet belly.

Practicing with my buddies . . .

Many long years ago, I practiced Tai Chi Sword, and Naginata, a women’s sword-fighting art, where the sword is bound to a six-foot bamboo pole that extends the reach of the sword.

There was a famous battle in Japan in an earlier century — I can’t remember which — where all the men in a village had gone to war, and the women saved their village by fighting off marauders on horseback by binding their husbands’ extra swords to long bamboo poles.

They could now not only reach the marauders and still not get hurt themselves, but they could cut the horses’ legs out from under them. Thus began the traditional martial art of Naginata.

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The Squall of All Squalls

I used to love to fish. Down at the dock, I’d dangle my feet off the end, feeling the outright peace being saturated with sun and calm and things-are-just-right brings.

Jumping, hissing, and spouting, frothy mini-geysers covered the harbor shore to shore.

Sometimes I’d row a skiff out, and float around in the shadows under the piers, throwing in my line to see what I could catch.

There, I was free from older-brother teasing, and “would you watch your little brother for a sec . . “ babysitting. Whether on the dock or out in a boat, I spent as much time every summer as I could with my catch bucket and lunch by my side, line in the water.

One lovely summer noon when we were 15, my friend Sally and I sat on my favorite dock, glumly watching our bait bobbers flop uselessly on the surface of the water — we’d caught plenty of fish earlier, but there had been no bites for some time.

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Bully

David came up behind me, grabbed my pail of fish, and before I could stop him, dumped it right on top of my head. He and his buddies squealed with laughter and ran off down the dock.

The Fish Laugh at My Worm Down at the Dock on this Glorious Sunny Day

The fishes slid down my back, into my shirt, down onto my lap. I was soaked, head to foot. Good thing I wasn’t squeamish.

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Fishies and Buddies at the Bottom of the Sea

I always think of my underwater scenes as reflective of our human life above the water.
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Fishies and Buddies at the Bottom of the Sea

How, at the very same time, life is so full of kindness and compassion, even as it is fraught with rampant killing and imminent danger, with safe and neutral territories and scary streets you’d avoid if you could.
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How there are sneaky eels hiding in the coral, waiting to strike the unsuspecting finny lunch; silvery minnows flitting around the wavy plant stalks, bright scallops appearing like uplifting lights in a dark sea.
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Feed the Lot (A Dream that I wish was real)

In a dream, I’m the manager of a catering company. We get an order to cater The Cattleman’s Association Annual Stockman Gathering. 800 people.

Spaghetti for Everyone!

I’m thinking, wow, 800 people! That’s a lot of people — I didn’t even know there was a group called that, much less that there were so many of them!

So I gather supplies, find a venue, conscript other caterers in town to help, and at last we are all set and ready to open the doors.

We’re standing at our tables in the huge room, waiting for the people to come in. Ten, fifteen, thirty, sixty, 80.

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Kitties Love Us, but Would Never Admit It

I love looking out at the squirrels who hop around on my neighbor, Joy’s roof, along with the jays and other birdies.
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Her cat chases them endlessly, but never catches a thing. I think he must be de-clawed, poor thing.
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There’s a hummingbird feeder out there, too – it’s always jam-packed with flying fluttering hummers. The kitty sits inside on the sill of the window, slathering at the mouth, dreaming of the impossible feast.
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Kitties Don’t Give Up!

I used to watch my cat sit still for hours watching the birdies – he never, ever gave up. It made me wonder why I often gave up easily.
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Kitties and pals howl because they feel so sad

So I stopped doing that. Now I’m like a ravenous tiger with a fresh steak – get away! Mine! I’m going to get this done!

A friend called me last week, crying about how hard it was getting her first book published on Amazon’s KDP platform.

She told me she had been so proud of herself for having written and illustrated it, and got a great cover, but now she felt stuck and a hair away from giving up.

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