• How To Get Someone Naked

    April 16, 2022 /

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    Hi friends. I have heard a lot of questions recently from people regarding nudity. So I’m going to kind of dive into that for the next couple of videos. And this one, this video is going to be about how to get someone naked. And I chose that title for a reason because it’s kind of misleading. It’s more like click baity than anything. But this is true. I will share with you how to get someone naked… if they already want to get naked.

    So number one, consent is the most important thing. If they want to get naked, they’re going to get naked. If they don’t want to get naked, do not force them. You can’t just get someone naked. That’s why I titled it this because I’m hoping that someone that needs to hear this is going to find it. 

    If you want someone to be naked and they don’t want to be naked, that is their choice. Not yours. They get to choose what to do with their body. If they don’t want to get naked, you have no control over that. All you can do is accept it and say, okay, cool thanks. Period. 

    So if you are around someone who you’ve discussed things with and they are consenting to be naked potentially, but they’re not ready for it quite yet, but they’re open to the idea. Here’s how you do it. We are never going to, like I would never encourage someone to coerce someone into something. That is not what we do. That is not consent. Coercion is not consent. Asking someone over and over and over again until they say yes is not consent.

    If someone is already curious and excited about the idea of getting naked and they’re just not quite sure when or where or how yet, you can create an environment that makes them feel safe, and give them the space that this is a clothing-optional environment. This is a clothing optional space. And then maybe they might decide that they want to get naked.

    So, a couple ways you can do this, to create a space that’s safe and comfortable for nudity. It’s usually best to start off with a place that’s private,  somewhere in your house, a room. Maybe if there’s like a private backyard, if you want to be outside, privacy is pretty important. If you’re going to be doing something that someone is not used to doing, I’m kind of used to it, but a lot of people are not, so privacy would probably be my number one helpful thing. If you have a private place where you know you’re not going to be disturbed and where the person is able to feel comfortable and know that they’re in a safe space. That would be awesome. Private safe space.

    You can make that private space more comfortable by maybe regulating the temperature of the space. Is it too cold? Is it too hot? Can you make the space at a comfortable temperature for nudity, a comfortable temperature, for nudity, might be different than a regular comfortable temperature with clothes on. You can have comfy things around like pillows and blankets maybe, so some restful time and space.

    Maybe you… if it’s okay with them, maybe you get comfortable and naked first. If they consent to you also being naked, that way you can introduce them to like being nude in the space that they’re in, in a non-sexual way, in a non like pushy way. Because you’re the one that’s getting naked. You’re like opening that door of like, this is now a clothing-optional space. If you get naked, they might also feel comfortable to get naked if they know that there’s like an even playing field. 

    Yeah, also just give them permission, let them know that is clothing optional. It’s not, “if you’re here you have to be naked”, or “if you’re here you have to be clothed”. They get to choose what to do with their body and how much or how little clothes they have on in that space. Like if you just, if you make that a known thing, if you communicate that with them, that’s kind of… that’s the recipe for success, a good private safe, comfortable space, where clothing optional is a thing, without any pressure or expectation on them and letting them choose what’s best for them. That’s how you get someone naked if they want to already be naked, if they already want to, that’s how you do it. But you can’t force them. I will forever remind you. Yeah, that’s how you get someone naked. If they already want to be naked, make it a comfy safe space. 

    I hope you have some fun naked times with friends, if they want to be naked and you want to be naked. Yeah, you might also… sometimes it’s good to have an activity or something to do like play a board game or something. Because if you’re just like sitting there twiddling your thumbs staring at each other naked it’s a little awkward. But if you have like a thing to work towards or something to like occupy your hands, or your thoughts, that also might make it a little more comfy, so it’s not as much pressure on, like, “oh my gosh. I’m naked and people are staring at me.” It’s more like, “okay, this is just another day, and we’re doing random normal fun friend things. It’s just we also happen to not have clothes on.” That’s how you do it. Okay. I love you. Thank you for being here. I hope this isn’t too long. I tend to repeat myself. Okay, I love you! Bye. 

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  • My Top 6 Photography Tools!

    April 9, 2022 /

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    Hi friends! Yay, okay. This week I want to share my top 6 Photography tools with you. So I’m just going to dive right in because I probably could talk a lot about it, but I’m going to try to keep this a shorter video. So my top 6 photography tools from Bunny Luna, that’s me. So the sixth, I’m gonna go from bottom to top. So the sixth of the top six photography tools, in my opinion of course, this whole thing is my opinion. Okay, top six.

    My number 6 is a tripod. So yeah, obviously, they’re pretty helpful for making videos like this one for taking self-portraits, for getting a camera where you want it to be if especially if any thing is like a longer exposure. There’s a lot of reasons why tripods are helpful. Yeah, so tripod is my number six tool for photography.

    My number five, the 5th tool for photography. That is my top 5 because it’s number five is a computer. Its kind of also self-explanatory. You could organize edit and share your content through a computer. Your smartphone probably also could count as a computer because you can do all those things from your phone if you have a smartphone, so I think that’s a very important photography tool. Some kind of computer whether it’s your phone or a laptop, or PC, whatever. That’s important because there’s a lot of things as a photographer you’re probably going to need to do on a computer. So that’s why is my number 5 *cough* number 5.

    Number four. You might be a little surprised. Because number four is camera, a camera is not even in my top three photography tools. Camera is the number four spot for me and I’ll tell you why. Obviously the camera is for taking photos. It’s helpful for that obvious reason ,you can take photos with it. But to me, it’s lower down on the list because it doesn’t necessarily matter all that much what kind of camera you have. Obviously there are some cameras you can do more things with than other cameras, but overall, if you just need to get a good image, you just need a camera. It can be a cell phone. Again, your cell phone is pretty useful. You can just use your cell phone camera. So the camera isn’t super important. I mean obviously it is, but there are other things that are more important than the camera. If you’re somebody that’s new to photography and you’re like, well, what camera should I use? Use whatever camera you’re already familiar with, or whatever camera you already have. What camera is the most likely one that you’re going to actually use and take photos with? That’s the camera you should use.

    Okay, so my number three spot for top my top six photography tools. My number three spot is the lens. The lens is like the eyes of the camera basically. The lens is what you see through, the lens is what makes the image look the way it does. If you have a crappy lens, you’re going to have a crappy photo, no matter how fancy your camera is. So for that reason, the lens is more important than the camera, because if you have an excellent lens and a shitty camera that photo is going to turn out better than if you have an excellent camera and a shitty lens. I’m just being honest, I used to work at a camera store. I know a couple of things about cameras. I’m definitely not an expert, but I know a few things. I know all of the basics. So yeah, the lens is more important than the camera. Yeah, invest in a really good lens. You can have like a mid-level or crappy camera. If you have really good lens and makes up for it. I promise.

    Number two, number two spot for my top 6 photography tools. Number two is light. As you notice I have a window. Well, you probably can’t see. But I have a window next to me because I need light, because if there’s no light and there’s no picture. There’s no light. It’s just black and darkness and you can’t see anything. The light is very important, if you have really shitty lighting, the whole thing is going to be a shitty photo, no matter how fancy your camera and lens are. Of course, some cameras and lenses have more capability to shoot in the dark basically, but if you want a really good image, you’re going to need some good light. So that’s why the light is number two.

    I wonder if you can guess what my number one of the top six photography tools is, I’m curious. I’m gonna give you like 5 seconds to think about it, and we’ll see you. If you’re right, let me know. So what is my number one of top 6 photography tools? So, my number six is tripod, Number five is computer, number four is camera, number three is lens, number two is light. What’s number one? I’m gonna give you five seconds.

    My number one tool for photography is creativity. What you have inside of you, the ideas you have, the emotions you have, the stories you have, the way that you can put things together and break things apart. Your creativity is the number one tool that you’re going to need for any photography ever. It doesn’t, like if you have the top camera and lens and you have all of the lighting equipment of everything, you have like all of the tools available to you. If you are not creative, if you can’t think of something interesting to create, it doesn’t matter what tools you have. Your creativity is like the number one thing that you need. If you have not so good tools, like camera lens that kind of thing and you have a lot of creativity, you can make *chefs kiss* world-class images. If you have that creativity, that’s all that really matters.

    Yeah, let’s see. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else I want to share with you, but I think  that’s good. I think I’m gonna do a little recap. So my number six of my top 6 photography tools, number six is tripod. Number five is computer. Number four is camera. Number three is lens. Number two is lighting, and number one is your creativity! That’s your number one tool for photography and creating in general is your creativity. What you have inside. Your brain, your heart, your body. That’s inside of you. Yeah, you can’t buy it anywhere. You just, you have it. Nobody can take it from you, it’s a part of you. That’s the most important, creativity. I promise. Okay. I love you. Thank you for being here. I’ll talk to you next week.

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  • Resources for Artists: Set Up a Website + Mailing List for FREE

    April 2, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hi friends! Welcome back to my website and this week’s vlog. So I’ve been talking about resources for artists and free things that can help you with your art and your business so far this month. And I think I have a little bit more to share with you today along those lines. So let’s dive in!

    A lot of people think that they have to spend a whole bunch of money on their website, on their mailing list on all kinds of things to make their business, like to get it started. But if you want to do that without paying money, here are a few websites that might help you.

    So the first one, if you want to sell things for free, like you don’t have to pay to create this website and you can sell things from it and get paid from it. I use beacons.ai, it’s kind of like you might be familiar with linktree. It’s kind of like that where it’s one website like one link and it’s basically full of other links, but the cool thing about beacons is they also have a shop section on there where you can put things like digital products in there to sell and you don’t have to pay to create an account. So they might take a small percentage as like a service fee. I don’t remember if they do or how much it is, if they do. But just to like, start off and have something and be able to start making money immediately after you sign up. This is a really good option. 

    So, beacons.ai, I’ll put the link to mine below (CLICK HERE TO SEE MY BEACONS PAGE) so you can see what an example of one looks like, but it’s really simple. If you have like multiple social platforms, and if you have, if you don’t really have an actual website yet, but you want to start selling stuff. This is a really good option because you can link to all of your socials, like, say you have a link to your Instagram, your TikTok, your YouTube, your Facebook, whatever you want to link to, I think you can have that section where you sell digital products.

    They also have a place on there where you can have people pay to like, receive a video from you, or like, a one-on-one session kind of thing. They have several options for ways that you can make money on there without having to pay to create a website.

    Another website that is really helpful that is free. You might… depending on what kind of art you make, you might want to look up for something different. But if your art is not too controversial, not too much like nudity and stuff, this is a really good option. So if you want to have a mailing list where you have a list of people that you can send emails to and create like landing pages and that kind of thing. MailChimp is a really good option. It’s you can sign up for free. They have a paid plan which has more features and things you can do. Like, you can actually schedule your emails instead of having to send them, like, click the button to send. But to me, it’s worth it to have it free. And I can just, you know, if I want to send it, I can draft it and then send it whenever I want it to send, but there’s other things on there that you can get for the paid version, but I’ve never needed to use it.

    We use MailChimp for Going Beyond the Lens. I don’t use it for my personal art because I have a whole bunch of nude stuff. Like, that’s most of what I share. So just in case because of their terms of service, I don’t use MailChimp for my personal, like, email list, but for the Going Beyond the Lens email list, we do use MailChimp. It’s really easy to use. It’s free. It’s great if you’re just starting out. 

    Also, none of these things are set in stone. Like, if you’re just starting and you want to get started and start stuff for free right now. These are great things to do and you can always switch platforms later on like say if you start a MailChimp you have a mailing list. You have like a hundred people on your list and you’re like, okay, this is great. I’m ready to start paying for a different list that can do more things. But I don’t want to stay on MailChimp. You can grab like you can transfer those contacts, your whole list from MailChimp to another platform. So it’s not like you have to be stuck with this one platform forever. If you choose it, it can be a temporary option for you until you find something that fits you better or until you can afford the thing that you really want.

    So yeah, those are two websites that can be really helpful to you if you’re just creating your art business and you want to get started selling stuff and having things for people to look at and sending emails, but you don’t have to pay for it. These are great options. Beacons.ai and MailChimp. Yeah, they’re real great. I think I think beacons does have an affiliate program. So if I might do that link here, but I don’t think MailChimp does. And if they do I’m not going to try to do that, but I might try to do the affiliate for beacons, because I think it might give y’all like bonus thing and me a bonus thing, if I refer you to beacons, so it will be beneficial to everyone. So, yeah, I just wanted to share more of those Resources with you because they’re helpful for me, so hopefully they’ll help for for you. 

    Yeah, I just I want all artists to be able to succeed and do well and I don’t think that we should have to pay a lot of money in order to do that because money is an automatic barrier to a lot of people, especially a lot of people that are already marginalized this society. So the ways that we can support them, that are free, I want to do it. Yay. Okay. So yeah. I hope this helps you. Beacons, and MailChimp are great. I have used them personally.

    Yeah, if there’s anything that you are curious about want to know about want me to talk about, let me know. You can either comment below. You can send me an e-mail or you can respond to you by survey. I’ll put the link below. Thank you so much for being here. I love you, and I’ll talk to you soon! Bye!

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  • Resources for Artists: Free Video Editing Software

    March 26, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends! Welcome back to my website and my vlog, I’m Bunny, thank you so much for being here! I’m going to continue my little mini series on things that I use in my art and my business that are free resources that have really helped me a lot. So I wanted to share that with you in case it will help you too. So last week I talked about canva this week I’m talking about video editing.

    I’m still a very beginner learner. I know that this resource that I’m about to share with you is this huge big powerful resource that can do a lot of things and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I can do with it, but I’m learning more and there’s a bunch of YouTube videos for learning even more about it, and diving deeper into learning video editing. I’ve learned that video editing takes a lot of time. So I may not want to be a video editor for other people or for very long extensive videos because I don’t want to spend like 10 hours on a 10 minute video because that kind of makes me feel depressed. So I try to not do too much, just because I would rather be doing other things than sitting on a screen at a computer and staring at a screen and editing video for hours and hours, and hours and hours.

    So, but if you’re a video editor, And well you probably, if you are a video editor, you probably already have the software for it. But if you want to learn video editing, and don’t know where to start and don’t want to pay for it. Here’s what you do. So Blackmagic is a big-time video company, they make cameras and they have software for video. They’re one of the more well-known camera makers that has like 4K cameras. They also have a video editing software called DaVinci Resolve and it’s free or, they have a free version and they also have a paid version. The free version, I like I said, I’ve barely scratched the surface of what kind of what I can do with, even just the free version, but it’s very powerful. You can do so much with it. So, of course, the generic, like usual video editing of like, cutting splicing moving adjusting stuff. I think you probably get that with any video editing, but they have a lot of controls that I don’t even know what they do, but I know that you can like sensor stuff on there. You can add captions, you can add like Graphics, you can do fancy transitions. I’m still learning, there’s a lot on there that you can do that I don’t even know about. I think you can change like the color stuff in there. Yeah. I’ve just started learning but it’s been really helpful, I know that it’s a really powerful software. So, it is something that you have to download onto your computer and it does take up… some space. I don’t know how much but if you have a decent computer with a decent amount of space, you can definitely download it. It is free.

    I’ve edited a few videos on there and there’s one that I’m not finished with and I’m still editing. It’s a little bit of a longer video that I’ll probably eventually share in my YouTube channel, which is like a cropped censored much shorter version of an older vlog from you guys like for me that are that’s on my website. So you’ve already seen the video technically. You just haven’t seen the edited much shorter version of it, which I will eventually be done editing. I’ve been spending more of my time in the past working on the residency application. So I kind of set aside my video editing project until I could finish the application for The Residency. But yeah, I just I really wanted to tell you about this software that is available to you for video editing.

    And before I finish this video, I think I’m going to tell you about another software that’s for video editing that’s on your phone. It’s an app, and it’s also free and it also is pretty powerful and has a lot you can do on there and I haven’t even touched all the things you can do. It’s not as powerful as DaVinci Resolve, DaVinci Resolve has way more things we can do. But this app for your phone for video editing is still, there’s still a lot you can do with it. You can do voice overs, you can switch out audio, you can crop and move and edit the video of course. I’ve seen that there’s other things you can do on there that I haven’t even touched, like, green screen and, like, adding different things to your video. I just haven’t played with that yet.

    But so this app for your phone, it’s called CapCut. It’s a free app and it makes it really easy to just like upload straight to Youtube. I think they primarily are using that app for TikTok because I have you can connect your TikTok account and like, grab the sounds from TikTok to put into the video and you can upload the video once it’s done straight to TikTok. I just don’t have a TikTok account. But if you do, that would probably be helpful. Yeah. CapCut is the name of the app. It’s really easy to use. Download on your phone for free and you can Video Edit with it. Yay we love free resources. Okay. Yeah. I think that’s all the important stuff want to share with you today. But thank you for being here. I hope that my little mini series of free resources for artists has been helpful! I’ll see you soon, next week! Love you!

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  • Resources for Artists: Creating Your Own Graphics + Promo Materials

    March 19, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends! Welcome back to my website and my blog and thanks for being here with me. I’m so glad that you’re here! Okay, so last week, I talked about the getting your shit together website and ways that I’m helping myself and hopefully helping you get more opportunities as an artist. So, this week, I wanted to talk about a couple of other like, free resources that I use to help me as an artist.

    Many of you probably already know about this, but I’m going to talk about it anyway, just in case you don’t, because it’s like extremely helpful for me and my life as a like an artist and a self-employed internet person. So I mean everybody needs graphics and like visual design things right? For websites, for social media posts, for banners, for all kinds of stuff. There is a website where you can do all that for free and it’s really easy to use and they have all kinds of everything you’ll need basically. They have templates, they have stock photos, they have graphics, they have the ability to make it into a video, like, gifs, kinds of stuff.

    So this website is canva… canva.com. This is not affiliated or anything, I just really love it. I use this website all the time. So if you need to make any kind of like visual content, it’s really easy to use canva to do that. You can make a free account. They have paid accounts too but there’s so much you can do on there even with just a free account. You don’t even need the paid account, unless you want the extra extra perks from the paid account. So I use canva for so much. Most of the banners on my website that you see a lot like the gifs and stuff that I or not gifs. The, the memes that I’ve made in the past, the thumbnails for my YouTube videos, the banners that I make for my events, a whole bunch of stuff has been made with canva. It’s so easy to use. You can add text and graphics, you can add images, you can use their images, you can use your images. It’s, I just, I love it. It’s so useful. And I love that it’s free and I love that it’s online. They also have an app. It just makes everything really easy. And when you download it, you can choose from a different a bunch of different kinds of files to download whatever your design is. 

    They have a ton of templates. So if you’re like, I’m gonna make a worksheet, then there’s a bunch of worksheet templates. I made my resume on there, made it look really fancy. They have templates for resumes. They have templates for like Facebook posts, Instagram posts, YouTube thumbnail. Banners for your website, they have templates for basically everything, and you can either use their templates or you can create it from scratch on your own. You can be like, I want this very specific size, I want a specific color, I want this specific font. It’s so useful and helpful, and I love it a lot.

    Yeah, so that’s a free thing that I use to help me with my business, my art, my lots of things. If you haven’t heard of canva, now you have. I hope you enjoy. Go search and look for it and make an account and do stuff and make, you know, have fun. Make some graphics. Yeah, it’s been really helpful for me. I hope it’s helpful for you.

    Yeah, if there’s anything else that you are curious about in terms of what I use for my business, for my art, put a comment below or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you. I’ll also put the survey below if you want to just answer my survey with a bunch of questions that I would love to hear about from you. Yeah. Thanks for being here. I’ll talk to you next week about more things that I use in my art and business that are free. Yay. 

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  • Resources for Artists: How to Write An Artist Statement

    March 5, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey, friends, I’m here again to talk to you about stuff that I think will maybe help you. So hopefully it does. I’m going to Dive Right In. Because so January/February is talking about goals and ways that I’m like helping myself and ways that I’m finding opportunities as an artist. And I thought that for March, I would talk a little bit about the tools that I use that help me do all the artists things.

    So for this video, I want to talk about kind of an extension from think it was last week or the week before where I was talking about the call for entry website and submitting application for residency. So part of submitting an application for a residency is writing an artist statement, and I don’t know about you, but that was really hard for me to do. I consider myself much more of a visual artist than a writer. So writing an artist statement was a struggle. I feel like I’m not as strong of a writer as I am an artist. And I think that with the way that we are required to submit applications for people to look at our art to consider us for opportunities, we have to know a lot about writing in order to submit those applications. So, I feel like that automatically kind of, like, cuts out a whole lot of people that may or may not actually be wonderful artists, they just struggle with writing.

    So, in order to hopefully, help more people have more opportunities as an artist. I want to talk about the resources that I use to help me write my artist statement, because hopefully it will help you too. I feel like a lot of us want our artwork to speak for itself and most of the time, it does. But sometimes in order for the right people to see it, we have to write the right things too. And not just have the right images or paintings or visual or whatever art is. So here we go.

    This is how I wrote my artist statement. Well, this is the resource I used to write it. Your artist statement is going to be very different than mine. And the way that you write it is going to be unique to you and your art, but the resource that I have found and used to write a lot of these things is the getting your shit together website. They have a book too, I think, when I was in college, they had us buy the book and use the book as part of one of my art classes. And then I learned later on that they also have a website with a whole bunch of resources for artists. So this getting your shit together website is very different from the call to entry website. The call to entry is for artists to submit their applications for opportunities and like to find opportunities. The getting your shit together website is like all of the kind of back-end stuff that artists need in order to be able to request those opportunities. So, like how to write an artist statement, how to write an artist resume, a whole bunch of stuff like that. Like how to find…

    I just got really distracted by a really cute bird out of my window! Okay, sorry.

    So I use the getting your shit together website as a resource for how to write the artist statement, because I was like, I don’t know. I don’t know what to write. I don’t know how to write it. I don’t know what is expected to be in it. I don’t want to write it incorrectly and then they just like throw out my application for this residency. So this website has all the information that you would need in order to write something like an artist statement. Like, for instance, I learned that artist statements are written in first person. So you say like, I me my… that kind of thing in the artist statement. And then of course it has like in the first section, it should say something like this and the second section you should include these things, and the final part you should do this. So it kind of gives you an outline of the types of things you would need in an artist statement, which will help you write your own based on what your artwork is.

    Yeah, artist statements are really hard. So yeah, I don’t make this video way too long and I have told you most of the really important information and in order to not repeat myself a lot of times because I think I’d do that… I’m just going to share the link to the getting your shit together website below, and it has a whole bunch of resources for artists in that way. Like, writing artist statements, writing your resume all that kind of thing. So, yeah. I hope it helps you, it definitely helped me. Yeah, I hope you have a wonderful day. I’ll talk to you soon. I love you! Bye! 

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  • Resources for Artists: How to Find Opportunities as an Artist

    February 26, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends. Thanks for coming here again to my website. So happy you’re here! Excuse me. Hi. So, in my last Vlog, I talked a little bit about this residency that I’m applying for, by the time this video comes out. I will have already applied, but as I’m recording this I haven’t submitted it yet. I wanted to follow up about it because I think that, or, I’m pretty sure that a lot of people would like to put themselves out there in that way, for opportunities as an artist, but they don’t know where to freakin start at all. And don’t even know how to find these opportunities. So I wanted to share with you where I find them and how you can do it too.

    So there’s this amazing website called CaFE or call for entry. I believe it’s call for entry dot org. And what this website does, is it connects artists with a bunch of opportunities, things like residencies, things like workshops, public art, exhibits, grants, awards. All kinds of opportunities that are geared toward artists. So if you’re an artist and you are like, I really want to put my stuff in the gallery show, but I don’t know where to start you go to this call for entry website and sign up as an artist and then it’ll… you can search through all of the calls and you can search for certain kinds of calls, and if you only want to look for exhibits or if you only want to look for residencies, or if you want to look for anything at all that is potentially available to you. They have all kinds of stuff on there and there’s, it’s constantly being updated. That’s where I found both of the residencies that I’ve applied for. I applied for residency last year that I did not receive, which I was sad that I didn’t get it, but I also can’t expect myself to get everything that I want always. Especially if it was like my first time applying for a residency ever. But that experience applying for residency last year really helped me with applying for one this year because I already had my artist resume created. I already had a lot of like generic kind of responses written out for the kind of questions they would ask for residency. So this one they did have more questions and different questions, but it didn’t take me as long to complete this application than it did for the one that I did last year because I already had a lot of stuff already figured out and put together and I already had kind of figured out a system of how to like figure out what I’m going to even say. So that helped me a lot, just doing it last year, even if I didn’t get the residency, that really helped me to be able to do it this year a lot quicker and easier, and with less stress and less time.

    So back to call for entry. If you sign up as an artist, you can search. And you can also sign up for their email list, which is really helpful because they’ll send out like new opportunities to your email that they think might work for you. And they also, I think it’s the… it’s either the most recent things or the things that are about to be due, like expire in terms of like you have until this date to apply but they’ll send out a whole list of like, here’s a whole bunch of potential things that you could apply for that are due in the next two weeks, or month, or so. Or here’s a whole bunch of stuff that is brand new that you might want to apply for. So you can get emails sent to you of all these potential opportunities and then you can just scroll through your email be like, oh, this one sounds cool and click through and do your thing.

    Another cool thing about the call for entry website is the applications to all of these things like the residencies gallery shows, exhibitions, like workshops all the things, you apply through the website. So not only does it help you find the opportunities, but it also helps you like put yourself in the running for those opportunities. When you apply and say you submit images or something for your portfolio, it’ll have those images in this website already so you can just reuse them for different applications. If you want to use the same photos. So it’s helpful because everything is all in one place. Yeah. It’s been really helpful for me. I think it would be harder to find the opportunities if I was just searching randomly and I probably wouldn’t be able to see as many all in one place if I was just on the internet somewhere else.

    So this website is call for entry dot org, that’s spelled C-A-L-L-F-O-R-E-N-T-R-Y-(dot)-O-R-G. This is not a sponsored post or anything. I don’t think they do affiliates, but I just the site has helped me as an artist do I just wanted to share it with you. Yeah, I hope I get the residency we’ll see! And if not, I’ll take another failure because each failure gets me closer to a success and I learn with each one.

    So, yeah. Hopefully this helps you as an artist. If you’re wanting to get yourself out there. If you have any questions comment below or send me an e-mail, or you can like submit stuff through my survey. I’ll link that below and yeah. I hope you have a wonderful day! I’ll talk to you soon! Bye!

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  • Goals Check In – Changing/Updating Them is OKAY!

    February 19, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hi friends, welcome to another week in Bunny Town. That’s really silly, okay. Hi. I don’t really have a super plan for what I want to share for the next couple of weeks. But I did want to check in with you about how your goals or not goals are going because I had talked a lot about goals last month. So I wanted to check in. I know, personally, I have met some of them that I’ve made and I’ve also not met some of them and I’m realizing, I think the anti planning stuff, like a combination of not planning and planning is probably going to help me out the most. Because when I have like, very rigid rules and structure of what I need to do, then that like takes away all of my motivation to do it. But when it’s like, here’s a buffet of fun things, you can do. Choose what you want to do and do something every day, that feels a lot better to me.

    So I may or may not actually get all the goals that I set for myself at the beginning of the year. Just simply because I think I might have tried to do too many things at once. So, I wanted to check in about goals again with y’all. And tell you that I‘m not necessarily meeting all of mine but that’s okay. That’s kind of why we set them is to try to meet them. But also like just to have something to work towards feels better than just like aimlessly scrolling the internet.

    So I’ve been focusing a lot in January on this application for a residency, and I’m like super hoping and dreaming that I’m going to get it. It’s a dream come true to me. If I get it, I’m super hopeful, but if I do get it, I would be spending three weeks in Shenandoah National Park to create art and to offer public programs for Shenandoah National Park, which holy moly. I really would love that to happen so bad. Like dream. So my application is due by the end of the month. Right now I think today is the 25th of January. I’ll probably be sharing this mid-February. So, by the time you see this, I will have already submitted my application and I have my fingers crossed that I’m going to get it. But yeah, so as I was like, right now when I’m recording this it’s due in a few days and I’m pretty sure that I’ve mostly finished it to my satisfaction. I feel like it could be better, but I have spent a lot of hours on it already and I think if I keep tweaking it over and over again, I’m just going to be frustrating myself and maybe not necessarily actually making it any better. So I think I’m to the point where I’m almost ready to submit it.

    I keep touching my side because I have the last day of this saniderm on my fresh tattoo and it’s so itchy! Tattoo healing is fun.

    So yes. Instead of focusing on making a YouTube video this month, I’ve been focusing on working on this application for the Shenandoah residency which I think is a great thing to work on. And I think that if I have like a priority for each month and have that maybe be a little bit different every month, that might help me instead of like make a video for YouTube every month, make a short every week. Maybe instead of that have like January was focused on The Residency, maybe February, I’ll focus on something else, like the video for YouTube or making more Vlogs for y’all or putting myself out there and trying to get on podcasts and stuff like that. Like having like a theme or a focus for the month might help me. So I might be something that I’ll try instead of a really rigid like, do this every month kind of thing. So we’ll see how it goes. I think it’s important to be flexible and I’ve noticed that when I’m really rigid with myself it doesn’t go super well. Yeah, I’m gonna… I’m going to try to be more flexible and go with what makes the most sense and makes me happy and works for me and the things I’m trying to do in whatever time frame it is. Yeah. 

    So before I take the saniderm off, I’ll go ahead and show you all the newest section of my tattoo. I got it mid-January. So, it’s pretty itchy. It still has saniderm on it. So it’s like a clear sticker, but it’s pretty healed, but the Cardinal and these two branches above it are, what’s fresh. And I think it looks real awesome! I’m so happy! So, I’m eventually going to be a whole tree. But right now I’m half the tree. I’m like, done to my hip. We have a lot more to go, but I’m getting closer almost every month. Trying to think if there’s anything else I want to share with you before I go. I think it’s good to just check in about goals and let you know how I’m doing. And I’d love to hear how you’re doing. Yeah, leave a comment or email me. I would love to hear how things are going for you. If any of my Vlogs about goals or anti planning has helped you at all. I’d love to know. Have a great day! I love you! Bye! 

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  • New Self Portrait Set Experimenting with LEDs!

    February 12, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends! Today I actually have a photoshoot to share with you! I haven’t taken any self-portraits I think since the summer of last year. So summer of 2021, I think was the last time I took self-portraits, like, with my actual camera, on purpose that’s more than just like a whim of like, let me take a couple selfies with my cell phone. I’m not really counting those for what I’m talking about. Sorry. I’m itching, my tattoo. Well, the saniderm that’s on it right now.

    Okay, so have a photo shoot to share with you. I’m pretty excited it was the first time I played with these new lights that I got. They’re super fancy. They’re actually not but I think they’re fancy and I’m very excited about them. So I’ll tell you about the photoshoot that I did. I was feeling spicy and It was like 11:30 at night. So it was dark. Right now I’m using sunlight because my room is like, mostly windows. So it was much darker than this. It was dark outside. Because it was night time, like 11:30 at night and I have these new lights that I wanted to experiment with. So I was like, I feel like taking self portraits so why not use my new fancy lights?

    So I took these photos just a couple days ago, but I think I’ve actually going to share this video in a couple weeks. So by the time you see this I took them a couple weeks ago, but here we are. I’m really excited. I had fun taking them. I’m trying to think if there’s any other, like, backstory information I should tell you. I took them right here, as you will see, very soon, but I was just like on my bed for these. I redid my photo wall so there’s more space. I don’t have to worry about accidentally knocking one, because this one was lower before and I was always like accidentally touching it and like, making it like off balance. So I don’t have to worry about that as much now because I redid my photo wall. It’s nice and curved like this. I really like it.

    So I took the photos here and when I did, it was dark outside and I just used these two tiny LED lights. They’re tiny, aren’t they? They’re so cute. So these are called Litratorches. These are two different like generations of them. I think this one’s the newer one, but they’re super cool. I got them at a discounted price because they were used, at my favorite camera store, Biggs Camera in Charlotte. They’ve been locally owned since… it’s been over 60 years now, 60 or 65 years. I love them. I help out, like I used to work there full-time and I just kind of go in to help occasionally.

    But back to the story of these photos, before I get too distracted. These Litratorches are really cool. They’re LED they’re super bright. They have a little button on the top to turn them on. This one has a little like silicone protector case thing on it. I don’t know if you can see but yeah, so there’s a little button on top turn it on, that’s the only button on it. On the back of it there’s a place for you can turn like I think it’s a quarter twenty tripod screw on the back of both of them. 

    And then they have a magnet inside of them, so there’s something metal you can just like, like stick it onto a metal thing and it’ll stay there because it’s magnetic. I don’t have anything metal here to show you, but it works. That’s pretty cool. They’re really bright. They actually have two quarter twenty threads. So there’s one on the back and one on the bottom. So there’s two of them depending on how you want to mount it and what kind of like tripod or thing that you have to mount them on. If you want to mount them, I was lazy. I just have to. I just laid them on the bed, so you can’t see it in the screen right now, but I had one laid down on the bed over here and the other laid down on the bed over here. And one cool thing that I really like about these is you can get little tiny gels to go with them. So there are these things that come with it. It’s just like a little plastic Square. I love this tiny case. Look how tiny and cute! So tiny, so these are the gels. Some of them are not ones that originally came with it. Since this was used somebody had these other ones that are like really thin and not actually the ones that are supposed to be with it. But I kind of like the color of them because they’re like a really warm kind of orangey color and you can stack them to make them darker, but I can tell that they’re not the best material because some of them are a little melty from being like somebody using them on the Litratorch for too long, but these are the thicker ones. They’re like green, yellow, blue and red. I used a red one. And I think I used one of these like orangey ones for my colors. So it’s really easy. You have this little square thing and the light. And you put this in the little square and then you put this in front of the light, snap it on. Oh it’s not fitting hold on. And then you have a colored light, so I’m gonna turn it on. I’m gonna not point it at you. 

    That’s the lowest setting and it has a color filter on the front. So they’re pretty bright. I’m gonna make it brighter, brighter. And then as a flashing one, but I’m not going to do that in case somebody has a problem with flashing but you press and hold to turn it off and that’s it. It’s super easy. And super awesome. And you can put different colors on them and they’re really great and I love them. And I’m really excited and they’re really tiny so they’re easy to travel with, and you just like charge it with little like a little, like tiny USB cord kind of thing and it’s super great. I love them and I’m excited. They also like, if you can buy them with a little, a little diffuser to put on it, to diffuse the light if you wanted to like to make it real soft. I just I’m happy. This is a really good buy in my opinion.

    So this is the first time I was experimenting with these little lights and since I didn’t have them on like a tripod or anything and I just put them on the bed with me. The light was coming from below and pointing up towards me because I was like here and the lights were here and here, and in some of the images that looked cool. And in other images, I wish the light was higher up like this height like maybe my face height or maybe like chest height and I think the lighting would have been better if they were a little bit higher, but it was like midnight and I don’t want to figure out how to get a bunch of tripods and stuff over here to put the lights in a better place and I still really like the way the photos turned out. So, I think it was, I think it turned out really great. Even if I wasn’t 100% happy with the light for the whole set, I still think they look really cool. And I had fun making them. So that’s all that really matters. Right? I hope you like the photos. I hope you enjoy my little behind the scenes of what I did to make them. If you liked those that might do something like this again because this was kinda fun.

    I used to take behind the scenes video of my shoots and maybe I’m thinking, I might take some behind the scenes video next time because I kind of miss having that, and that’s a kind of nice thing to have to be able to look back at and actually watch a photoshoot happen. Yeah, that’s kind of fun. So I’m gonna try to remember to do that next time. It’s not always easy because I’ll need like my phone and my camera to do it. If I’m going to take photos and video same time. 

    Yeah, I hope you like these photos. I had fun making them. I felt spicy, can you tell? I was listening to good music too, and that helped me like get into the groove. So also I’m really proud of myself. I usually don’t even look at my photos for like a month after I take them. And then it takes me even longer to actually put them on SmugMug for y’all to see them. But in this case, I looked at them and uploaded them within like a week of taking them so I’m pretty proud of myself that I’m actually like staying ahead of the curve so don’t get behind. Yeah. I hope you like these photos and enjoy my little behind the scenes how I made them. I hope you have a wonderful day and I’ll see you soon! Bye!

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  • Anti-Planning!?

    January 29, 2022 /

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hi friends! So this month I’ve been talking about goals and like setting goals and working toward goals and making goals and I’ve been talking about goals all month so far. And I just a couple days ago, took a mini workshop about anti-planning from Elizabeth Goddard, and it has me thinking maybe goal setting isn’t the best idea for me, always. So I want to acknowledge goal-setting is super great for a lot of people. It may or may not work for you or me or your friend or whoever and I wanted to give another perspective kind of based off of the information that I’ve already given you. So, I’ve already talked a lot about goals and like ways that you can set them and things like that, but I wanted to also talk about getting things done without having really rigid goals and plans.

    As you have already heard, I’ve set some goals for myself and I’m already starting to either not want to do them, or I’m just, like, feeling behind on them already and it’s not even February yet, or I’m just like, they feel like an obligation that’s not really fun. And I’m wondering why I want to do them. So let’s talk about anti-planning and doing things to work towards things we want to do, but in a less structured, you have to do it this way, this time, this place, kind of way. So let’s do it. 

    So Elizabeth Goddard, I don’t, I don’t think I’ve talked to y’all about her very much but she’s in the UK and she’s like a business online business, kind of person and she teaches some courses and stuff and she recently did this Christmas party thing where a lot of her students offered free resources and guides, and worksheets and courses and stuff to anybody that wants them for free. So I downloaded of those and Elizabeth Goddard‘s anti-planning workshop was part of that big bundle of things that we could get. So I did that. She had this option where you can listen to it like a podcast which is really helpful for me because I was able to do the whole thing while I was waiting three hours in line to get a covid test. So I was doing something while also doing something else. Um, so that was really helpful for me, but I wanted to talk a little bit about what Elizabeth said during that anti-planning workshop in this vlog post.

     

    Click here to learn more about Elizabeth Goddard

    I’m not going to go over everything. Obviously. I’m not Elizabeth Goddard. I’m just sharing some of the things that she shared. So first off acknowledging that goals and like rigid planning is not necessarily going to work perfectly for everyone. Everyone’s different. Some people work really well with goals and plans and some people really don’t. So, that is just the beauty and magic of being an individual human. Everybody has different needs and wants and desires, and ways that they go about doing everything in life.

    So, one of the things that Elizabeth shared in the workshop was making a decision about what you want and then figuring out ways that you can work towards that in small increments. So this kind of already like goals, but it’s kind of also not. So once you have a why of what you want to do that helps you have a reason to continue working towards whatever this thing is. You can set smaller goals, like maybe monthly goals or income goals, things like that, but you don’t necessarily have to. She talked about how she doesn’t necessarily make a plan for what she’s going to do any further out than like a month. But what she does do is she has several things that she wants to work toward on an every day, or like a weekly basis that she needs to do her business anyway, which is like growing her audience, nurturing her audience, and selling to her audience. Which that makes sense, right? Like that’s what most online businesses need to do. And for her it’s not necessarily about I have to do this thing, this day, this other thing, this other day, this thing that day, it’s more, like what actions can I do everyday to slowly work toward these things that I want? So growing nurturing and selling you can work toward that every day without having a specific checklist.

    Like she could be I think some of her examples were she would work on emails to her email list. She has Facebook groups that she is in a lot. So she communicates with her people there. Finding new ways to find other people. So, like reaching out to other entrepreneurs and seeing if she could be on like podcasts, things like that. So it’s not really like this huge list of all these things she has to do. It’s she knows the direction she wants to go in and every day she does a little bit in that direction.

    Another thing that she talked about was having like a word or a theme for the year to kind of keep you centered on what it is that you want to work on. So it could be like Focus or Community or Sharing like whatever you feel is important to you and your business right now. Like for me personally, I probably would say Sharing and Community for like if I were to think of a word or theme for the year, because I know that I kind of struggle with like I’ll make a lot of content, but I don’t actually share it anywhere or I’ll just put it behind a pay wall for members like y’all. So that means way less people get to see it, and I’m not really growing and kind of staying in the same place because I’m making things but I’m not really sharing them with anybody. So that would be for me. Like sharing would be a thing that I would like to work toward.

    She also talks about having core desired feelings. Like what do I want to feel this year? And how can I make a steps in that direction? Like I want to feel calm I want to feel happy, I want to feel like I’m helping people… so that can be another way to orient yourself towards what is important for me to work on right now.

    She also talks about making incremental upgrades instead of trying to do like one huge, massive project and a short amount of time. Try to just make one thing a little bit better today and then one thing a little bit better tomorrow or next week or whatever.

    She also talks about creating be do have lists. So things that you want to be, things that you want to do, and things that you want to have. And in that little course thing she was talking about how sometimes when she writes this be do have list, she doesn’t even necessarily have to like be going after all those things all the time, sometimes once she figures out what it is that she wants to be do and have they kind of find their way to her sometimes.

    So I think this is kind of a reiteration of the fact that we need time and space to like mull things over and like, not be doing doing doing all the time and to just kind of be and exist in order to make room for those things to happen or those changes to come to life or whatever.

    So I wanted to make sure that I shared some of this with you because I know that me personally I’m already kind of doubting that I’ll be able to do all of the like weekly and monthly things that I set out that I wanted to do just earlier this month. And just the fact that it’s been a couple weeks already and I’m already like am I really going to be able to make a short for YouTube every week? Do I really want to do that? And with the amount of time it’s taking me to edit this one video, I’m wondering if I’m actually going to be able to like, create a whole video for YouTube every month.

    So, here is me being an imperfect human. I have goals that I may or may not work towards that I have hopes for, but I also don’t want to pressure myself too much about doing them super consistently, because then that’s when I feel like bogged down and like I really don’t want to do it. When I have too many things on my plate, I don’t want to do any of the things. 

    Um, I wanted to tell you I’m an imperfect human, you’re an imperfect human and we all have things that we want to work on and whether or not we do that in a really structured way… as long as we’re doing something in the direction of where we want to go, whenever we can, that’s the best we can ask for, right? Just surviving 2020 and 2021 is a feat. Congratulations! You are still here! Good job! I’m proud of you, I’m proud of me! We are still here! So that means just like, yeah, everything… everything will be okay whether or not we’re super planning and goal oriented or not. Like we exist, we survived 2020 and 2021. We’re doing good.

    Okay. Yeah. Just wanted to share some anti-planning stuff with you since this whole month has been about goals. So just want to say hi. I love you. Thank you for being here and I’ll talk to you soon! *MWAH* Bye!

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