04 February 2025

2025 January Roundup

I'm back again, one day later, doing my best to get another roundup done so I won't be behind anymore! Without further ado, here's how I kicked off 2025 🎊✨

Patreon Rewards

I completed another Maginaturalist's Sketchbook piece in January, featuring Fafnir, the dwarf-dragon of Norse legend. He slithered out to warm patrons' mailboxes soon after!

Please join my Patreon to get cool, illustrated rewards like this and to help keep my creative career flowing 💖 As a patron, you get digital rewards like coloring pages and Discord access, and you can chose from physical rewards including postcards, prints, or both! Every member not only helps by providing funds for things like art supplies and equipment upgrades, but also gives me a huge emotional boost and social proof to anyone who may be on the fence about supporting me. Thank you so much 🥰

deviantART

I uploaded several new pieces in January, but the one I have decided to feature here is a chibi caricature of Steve the Otter, which was made as a birthday gift for my mother-in-law 💐💕

View, fave, and comment on deviantART.

You can commission me for a chibi caricature like this! I can chibify animals of all kinds, including humans, so long as I have a high-quality, full-body photo reference to work from 🎨 There are two places to commission me, just choose the platform you prefer: deviantART or Square.

Livestreaming

After taking the first two (partial) weeks of January off for the holidays, I returned to livestreaming like usual, sharing my artmaking process on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the remaining three weeks of the month. January's final artstream had me finishing another chibi caricature, this time Tiger the Cat, as a birthday gift for my sister 🐈

Consider subscribing to my Twitch channel as another way to support my storytelling career! You get fun perks like custom subscriber badges and emotes that can be used all across Twitch, and I get your financial, emotional, and social backing 🥰 Thank you!

Charity Fundraising

Our Charity of the Month for January was Veganuary again this year 😄 We had 20 unique viewers that month, which is how I calculate what my end-of-month donation will be.

My formula is to donate $0.10 USD per unique viewer, with a minimum of $10 and a maximum of $100, so I just sent Veganuary $10!

As you can see in my email receipt, they have a match going on, which meant that we helped raise $20! But that's not all! My wonderful subscriber, Wolfaxe2, stepped up at the last minute, and donated the full £10 goal to our Twitch fundraiser!

So together we raised over $30 for Veganuary in January!!! 🎊✨🎊✨🎊 Thank you to everyone who watches my streams and donates to these fundraisers. You help make my storytelling work so much more meaningful 💖

Gryphia Progress

I'm going to talk more about my 2025 goals a bit farther down in this post, but one of them is to work on my novel every workday. I'm stoked to report that I achieved that for January!

I'm using this freebie planner to keep track of the days that I work on Gryphia (and the days that are scheduled vacation) so it feels great to have the January spread completely filled out like this ✨

I've continued to work on writing and editing my second draft using Scrivener. It's rather slow going, in a way, but I am constantly coming up with new ideas and refinements, so I am moving forward, even if the word count doesn't always reflect it. Editing has always been my favorite part of a writing project, so I'm having a blast every day!

Other News: 2024 Goals, 2025 Goals

As I did last year, I would like to take some time to reflect on the goals I set for myself and how I did. Here are the goals that I set at the beginning of 2024:

  • Career ✒️ I will spend 50+ minutes each workday on Gryphia writing.
  • Education 💮 I will spend 20+ minutes studying Japanese every day.
  • Finances 💳 I will pay off all credit cards.
  • Health 😌 I will meditate every day.
  • Hobbies 🎮 I will play a Nintendo Switch game every day.
  • Travel 🐮 I will visit a Farm Sanctuary location.
  • Family 🕊️ I will do my pet care routine every day before breakfast.
  • Relationships 💌 I will write a letter every day.
  • Reading 📚 I will read at least one page every day.

Many of my goals evolved as the year went by. Circumstances change, emergencies occur, but instead of giving up, I adapted so that I could keep working toward my greater aims even if it was different to how I first imagined it. Here are my goals at the end of the year, and my thoughts about them:

  • Career ✒️ I will work on Gryphia writing every workday.
    I had to remove the time requirement for this goal, which worked great because then I no longer wrestled with thoughts like, "Why bother working on it at all today, since I can't achieve the full time anymore?" So I continued to make steady progress throughout the year!
  • Education 💮 I will complete a Duolingo Japanese lesson every day.
    My streak remains intact at an astounding 1,678 days!
  • Finances 💳 I will pay off all credit cards.
    I achieved this and, in doing so, completely revamped my spending habits and overall financial hygiene. This is one of the toughest yearly goals I've ever accomplished but I'm so glad I chose to tackle it, because it came with far more rewards than I expected. My relationship with money is completely different and I'm no longer interested in the impulse purchases that used to tempt (and trap!) me. I'm free now to use any disposable income for things that REALLY matter to me, like increasing monthly charitable donations, saving up for epic vacations, and paying down other debt, like my student loans 🤑
  • Health 🚿 I will shower every day.
    I changed this goal because I found myself really struggling to fit in all elements of basic self-care. It may sound like a no-brainer, but I shower at the end of the day so that I can get into bed feeling warm and clean, which means it can be tough when I'm depleted after a busy day, and having to make the decision between showering or getting enough sleep. It's something I'm still working on, but has definitely improved with practice!
  • Hobbies 🎮 I will play a Nintendo Switch game every day.
    While I didn't fit this in every day, I'd say I played a game at least 90% of the days, which is still an A grade!
  • Reading 📚 I will read a page a day.
    Sometimes I gave myself a bye and just read two pages the next day, but overall I was successful here. I ended up reading a total 7,233 pages, because I'd often read much more than the single page that my goal required!
  • Family 🕊️ I will do my pet care routine every day before breakfast.
    Again, I didn't do this every single day, but it was even more frequently achieved than my hobbies goal. This is an important task because the pet care chores can be unpleasant (scooping poops, especially!) so I tie it to breakfast to keep me really motivated to get it done early!
  • Relationships 🍻 I will host seasonal family dinners and Sunday Friends Lunch.
    I had to change this goal because writing a letter stopped being fun and started being a chore. I decided to find a different way to stay in regular touch with my most precious people, and it worked!
  • Wellness 😌 I will meditate every day.
    This replaced my travel goal because I realized I couldn't save up for a road trip AND pay off my credit cards, all in the same year. I switched from Headspace to Insight Timer partway through the year, which I like much better! My daily meditation streak there remains intact at 170 days.

For fun, I also wanted to share photos of last year's reading calendar, which I got from Half Price Books, and this year's calendar.


I use these calendars to track my daily reading streak and to mark down what books I finished, which makes for a fun, interactive decoration and a nice memento at the end of the year.

Finally, I want to share the goals I set for this year. They may evolve, as last year's did, but so far they are working well for me, giving structure to my daily life, and supporting my health and wellbeing.

In list form, they are:

  • Career ✒️ I will work on my first Gryphia novel every workday.
  • Education 💮 I will complete a Duolingo Japanese lesson every day.
  • Finances 🏦 I will save up at least $4,000 for my 2026 Caribbean cruise.
  • Health 😴 I will go to bed, eyes closed, by 21:50 every night.
  • Hobbies 🎮 I will play a Nintendo Switch game every day.
  • Wellness 🔋 I will take a monthly rest week from livestreaming and high intensity workouts.
  • Family 🕊️ I will do my pet care routine every day before breakfast.
  • Relationships 🥂 I will host Friends Lunch and attend Vegan Toastmasters on Sundays.
  • Fitness ⚖️ I will reach 120 lb body weight or 22% body fat by July.

Wish me luck! I have crafted all these goals with the knowledge of how previous years went, what changes needed to be made, and what works best with my circumstances. I'm feeling excited to achieve all these things and more in 2025 🤩

That's all for now, thank you for reading until the end. I'll be back with another roundup post next month, and maybe with a Japan Adventure post in the meantime! Until then, please stay happy, healthy, and safe ❤️

03 February 2025

2024 November & December Roundup

I'm gonna try to get three months of roundups done in two days, an ambitious goal, if I do say so myself 😎 To start, let's catch up on November and December of last year!

Patreon Rewards

At the end of November, I sent rewards featuring my recently completed Cozy Christmas Coodlers illustration 🕊️

And in December, I sent the next entry in my Maginaturalist's Sketchbook series, Ea the Mesopotamian sea god 🧜‍♂️

Patreon is the best way to support my artmaking, providing both funds and emotional support 🥰 Click here to sign up for digital rewards, postcards, prints, or all three!

deviantART

On November 9th, I was honored with my second-ever Daily Deviation 🤯🥹🥳 My Summer Gryphon piece was nominated by LindArtz and featured by Malintra-Shadowmoon 💖

View, fave, and comment on deviantART.

Later that month, I uploaded my Cozy Christmas Coodlers greeting card illustration, which was my final full-color illustration of the year.

View, fave, and comment on deviantART.

deviantART is another place you can support my artmaking! You can commission me for a chibi caricature here, or sign up and become my first monthly subscriber here!

Livestreaming

For November's featured Twitch stream, I'm choosing the final round of work on my Cozy Christmas Coodlers!

For December, I am featuring the final stream of 2024, which was the first round of work on a chibi caricature of Steve the Otter!

I livestream art nearly every week on Twitch and it's another place you can support me by subscribing! Lurkers are always welcome, but I love to chat, too! See you on my next stream 😉

Charity Fundraising

November's Charity of the Month was Farm Sanctuary and we had 20 unique Twitch viewers that month.

My donation formula is $0.10 USD per unique viewer, minumum donation of $10 and maximum of $100. That meant a $10 donation!

On top of that, my awesome viewers, bickman2k and ExieTheArtist, both donated $10, so we raised a total of $30 for Farm Sanctuary in 2024 🥳✨

December's Charity of the Month was The Protego Foundation 🪄 We had 11 unique viewers that month, so I donated $10!

Thank you to everyone who joins my streams and donates to the Studio Mikarts fundraisers on Twitch! Knowing that together we're making a difference for animals—while having fun!—gives every minute of live time so much more meaning 🥹💕

Gryphia Progress

The editing of my first illustrated novel made big strides in these months! Working diligently each week since July, in December I finally finished the first round of edits, spanning 222 pages!

Moving onto the next step, I started my second draft. The first was written on my Freewrite smart typewriter, which purposefully disallows editing (so you can just get on with the storytelling!), but now I am in the editing stages, so I am using Scrivener on my desktop PC.

Every step I take in this project is literally the most I've ever worked on a novel, so every bit of progress is exciting! I can't wait to see how far I get in 2025 🤩

Other News: Winter Vegan Market

I was chosen to be a vendor for the Winter Vegan Market here in Boise, Idaho! It was so exciting to meet so many people, especially when they braved the cold to come out (we were very lucky that the rain didn't start until exactly the market's scheduled end 🤯), to share my artwork with new customers and clients, and to help show that veganism isn't a diet, but a complete lifestyle of non-harm 💖💕

Here are some photos from the event, the second of its kind in my area!

I got more modular display grids this time!

Coloring pages, greeting cards, and chibi commissions.

More greeting cards, stickers, pin-back buttons, and magnets.

The wind kept trying to blow my postcards away!

Postcards and prints.

Set up and ready to sell!

I bought these cookies from our neighbors immediately!

Selfie with my new friend, Angie!

Selfie with one of my best friends, Leigha, and her two pups 💕

One unexpected perk of vending this time was getting SO MANY treats from the food vendors! We purchased a lot (last time they sold out super quick so my husband and I swooped in early!) but we also received many gifts at closing time, as well 🥹💖💕 I love being a part of the vegan community! I hope I can vend at the upcoming Spring Vegan Market as well, but even if not, I'll definitely attend as a shopper!

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That's all for this roundup! Thank you so much for reading 'til the end. I'll be back VERY soon with my roundup for January 2025 😆 Until then, please stay happy, healthy, and safe!

11 November 2024

2024 October Roundup

It's my ideal kind of day at the moment; the sky is overcast, the wind is picking up, the leaves are whirling about, and I'm enjoying being bundled up snug against the cold 🥰 October was unseasonably warm and I started to worry we weren't going to enjoy any real autumn weather at all! Here's what I got up to during those slowly cooling days.

Patreon Rewards

I finished the illustration and setting up the digital file for printing, but I was derailed by being subpoenaed as a witness in a court hearing and didn't actually send Patreon rewards until November. They feature my most recent Maginaturalist's Sketchbook piece: Da.

Patreon is the best way you can support my work and help me keep creating 🥰 You can sign up to receive illustrated postcards, prints, both, or neither! Please click here to join us today.

deviantART

The only piece I submitted to dA in October was Da, the rainbow serpent of West African myth. I created it using ink on vellum-finish sketchbook paper, with digital refinement using Photoshop.

Click here to view, fave, and comment on dA!

You can also support my work on dA! Instead of physical rewards, you can get printable coloring pages and chibi caricatures 🖼️✨ Click here to become my first supporter there!

Livestreaming

I had to skip a lot of streams in October due to various things, including preparing to sell my work at the very first Boise Vegan Market, taking a weekend off to watch a Seattle Reign away game, and the subpoena that I mentioned earlier (being a witness is SO STRESSFUL 😬) but we still had fun during the times I was able to go live. Here's the recording of the last stream of the month, which fell on Halloween!

Twitch is another place where you can support my creative efforts. Become a monthly subscriber and you will receive exclusive Discord server access, cute emotes to use all across Twitch, and custom subscriber badges! Click here to visit my channel and subscribe.

Charity Fundraising

Our charity of the month for October was Palomacy! I choose them every October because it was the first full month I spent as a pigeon's guardian 🕊️💕

We only had 15 unique viewers in October, which makes sense, but also isn't bad considering I was only able to stream on five days! My formula for these donations is $0.10 USD per viewer, with a $10 minimum, so that meant $10 for the pigeons.

If you'd like to support Palomacy and all the birds they help, you can click here to make your own donation. Thank you on behalf of pigeons and doves everywhere~!!

Gryphia Progress

It's been slower going recently but I have made headway in editing my first draft! In October I got into chapter seven, which means I'm more than halfway done with this first round of editing my illustrated fantasy novel 😄

Other News: Vegan Market and Studio Upgrades

At the beginning of October, I was ecstatic to vend at Boise's first Vegan Market! Not only was it wonderful to sell my work in a setting surrounded by others who care as much as I do about making the world better for animals, I hope by being present as a vegan illustrator I helped demonstrate that veganism is not just a diet, but a lived philosophy that touches every part of our lives ❤️ Here are some photos from the event!

Me at my booth!

The monitor was hard to read in the daylight 😣

Pin-back buttons and magnets.

Giclée prints and greeting cards.

Giclée prints and postcards.

More giclée prints and postcards!

Also in October, my wonderful husband helped me by getting a couple key studio upgrades! The first was a new computer chair for my desktop PC workspace. The chair I had before was super old, worn out, and aggravated my chronic lower back pain whenever I used it. This new chair, on the other hand, fits my body perfectly and my back pain actually lessens when I use it, because I can finally practice good posture!

The chair matches the aesthetic, too!

The other upgrade was a new laptop!! At the Vegan Market, my five-year-old laptop struggled mightily to do what I was asking of it (run Photoshop, connect to the printer, and print greeting cards and prints to replace the ones that were selling) which inspired my husband to get me a new one 🥹 He had already tried getting better RAM for the old one, since the machine had been struggling for a couple years, but to no avail. That said, happily, my younger sister took my old laptop after I did a Windows reset. Her previous laptop was even older and less capable, so we both ended up with upgrades 😄

Kiki helping unbox my new laptop 🐱

I decided to make it Suikoden themed!

My laptop in its new home, at my drafting table workspace.

That's all from me this time. I hope you enjoyed this post, thank you for reading to the end! Until next time, may you stay happy, healthy, and safe 💖

08 October 2024

2024 July, August, September Roundup

What a summer I had this year 🤯 I'm still playing catchup after a string of medical emergencies and illnesses that struck our household from the end of July through to mid-August. So let's cut to the chase! Here's what I got up to over the past three months, written with all brevity!

Patreon Rewards

In July I sent Baba Yaga rewards 🧙‍♀️🧹 You can read more about them here.

And in August I sent Cabyll-Usige rewards 🌊🐴 Find out more here.

September's rewards featured the Summer Gryphon illustration that took me several months to complete! Read about them here.

Patreon is the best way to support my storytelling efforts, and you can get sweet rewards like these postcards in the bargain! Please click here to join us today 🥰

deviantART

The image I submitted in July was a chibi caricature of Creamy Kitty, who had recently crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

View, fave, and comment on dA!

I submitted the Cabyll-Usige illustration in August, the third entry in my Maginaturalist's Sketchbook series.

View, fave, and comment on dA!

In September, I submitted my Summer Gryphon, the final entry in my Seasonal Gryphon series!

View, fave, and comment on dA!

You can support my work on deviantART, similar to Patreon, except instead of postcard or print rewards, you can get chibi caricatures! Please click here to join 💖

Livestreaming

The final Twitch stream in July was only one hour long. By this time, the medical emergencies had started and impacted the amount of time I had to share with everyone. It was still a good time, focused on my chibi baby bok choy subscriber badge!

I was finally able to resume my normal streaming schedule in the third full week of August, and in the following week, I started using my completely revamped visual and technological setup, including my new Logitech Reach camera! Here's the first stream featuring all that hard work 😁

It was so exciting to finish my Summer Gryphon piece in September! This livestream covered the last round of work on it.

Please consider subscribing to my channel on Twitch. It's another way you can help Studio Mikarts!

Charity Fundraising

July's charity of the month was The Rat Retreat, which I feature in July because that was the month in which I adopted my three sister rats, Minerva, Nymphadora, and Bathilda 🐀🐀🐀 Before I get to my donation, I want to thank our wonderful Wolfaxe2 for once again donating the entire amount to our Twitch fundraiser!!!

As for my own donation, it's based on my unique viewers count for the month: $0.10 USD per viewer, min $10 and max $100. We had 21 in July!

So that meant a $10 donation from me, and a total of $20 to The Rat Retreat~!!

August is the birthmonth of one of my heroes, Fiona Oakes, so I chose her organization, Tower Hill Stables Animal Sanctuary, as our charity that month 🥳✨ Once again, Wolfaxe2 showed up big time and donated the full £10 to our Twitch fundraiser!!!

Our unique viewers count for August came to 21 AGAIN, which was awesome considering all the time I had to take off due to the aforementioned medical emergencies 🤒

This led to a £10 donation from me, which combined with Wolf's contribution came to £20 total!

And in September, our charity was Best Friends Animal Society, chosen because September 22 is the adoption day of Kumo, Chappie, and Aoife, whom all came to us from Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah 😻 (September 22 is what I call Everything Day, because it's also the northern autumn equinox, Hobbit Day, Sora's rescue day, and my wedding anniversary!) Super exciting for our fundraiser this time was having two donations that, on their own at least DOUBLED the goal, which means we more than QUADRUPLED the Twitch fundraiser goal 🥳🎊🎉✨ Thank you very much to bickman2k and Wolfaxe2 for helping the animals so much!!!

I was also pleasantly surprised by our unique viewers count in September, since I took two weeks off from streaming (one for my anniversary and another to prepare to sell my art at Boise's very first popup Vegan Market in October!). It was the highest of these three months, at 24!

This meant another $10 donation from me, for a grand total of $55 raised for Best Friends Animal Society!

Our charity of the month for October is Palomacy, chosen because October was the first full month I spent as a pigeon's guardian 🕊️💕 Join me on Twitch, and bring your friends to get the viewer count up! Consider donating to the fundraiser while you're there, or making a donation directly 🥰

Gryphia Progress

To hasten this blog post's completion, I will just share three photos--one each from July, August, and September--showcasing my slow-but-steady progress editing my first draft of my illustrated novel!



I am now into chapter five of twelve, so things are moving along nicely! Once the markup process is done, I'll start my first rewrite 🖊️

Other News

As I've mentioned above, I had a whirlwind summer. At the end of July, my husband was hospitalized for an emergency appendectomy. About a week later, my big dog, Aoife, was attacked by the neighbors' off-leash dog, requiring over $1,500 in medical care, plus intense at-home care while she recovered. In the next week after that, our cat, Kiki, came down with a UTI and needed multiple emergency vet visits. With all these hospital visits and the extra stress of caring for everyone, my husband and I both ended up contracting COVID-19 😱 I was extremely sick and utterly miserable. But I didn't need to go to the doctor, for which I was grateful! It can always be worse! By September, I was feeling better, so I get to end this blurb with happy news! September 22 was Everything Day, and it went splendidly! Here are some highlights from the day:

Everything Day is September 22! It includes my wedding anniversary 💖

It's also Hobbit Day! This is my Tolkien collection.

It's the adoption day of Chappie and Aoife!

And it's the rescue/adoption day of Sora and Kumo, respectively!

Kiki wasn't forgotten; she enjoyed patio time in her new playhouse!

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And that's it for this roundup post, three months in one! I'll try not to get so behind again, but, as this post illustrates, sometimes things happen 😅 Thank you for reading all the way until the end and please stay happy, healthy, and safe 💖

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