Sandy Steen Bartholomew

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Zentangle

Creative Friday

Books Featured

BLUE ROO - The Book, The Stickers, The Video!

Seeing piles of my brand new books gets me very excited! There are only 5 more days for this Kickstarter and it is still... a bit of a stretch... to meet the goal. And the goal is to cover the cost of printing these amazing books! I thought I would

Published Featured

BLUE ROO Kickstarter!

I have a new kid's comic/book out!  It’s a comic/picture book hybrid called BLUE ROO - An illustrated story about Albina, a girl who likes everything white.  Her world is organized, labeled, clean, and predictable. Everything changes suddenly when her favorite stuffie, a white kangaroo named Roo,

Art

Inktober <pause>?

I did my best, but I have a permission slip that says I can get out of doing Inktober this year. Time to Bounce... The Inktober inspired sale is still in progress in my ETSY shop - BUMBLEBAT - and with the 25% off, it's been very popular! My brain

Art

Inktober Begins... Began

Yes, I'm already a week behind. What can I say, it's a tradition. I have been doing the Inktober challenge for years. Maybe too many. But it's the best thing for getting me back in the habit of drawing everyday. And it has inspired me to create my own challenges

Self-Care

Monster Cookies

Thanks to the Pandemic, I belong to a lot of groups who meet on Zoom... neurodivergent groups, writer groups, artist groups and combinations of those... I forget that humans have more than just faces and torsos, don't live in tiny squares, and continue to have lives when they aren't on

Self-Care

The Covid 19 (aka The Covid Diet)

My goal this month was to find alternative ways to decrease the inflammation in my body (without any "procedures" or shots into my joints). I had been reading books by Mark Hyman, MD - and I will post the sketchnotes I drew on this blog soon. I started with the

Exploring

They grow up so fast?!

While every other parent was taking pics of their kids going back to school (my kid is never with me for the first day of school - gotta love a parenting plan written over a decade ago and never updated) - I was teary-eyed over my puppy who is now

Lego

Grooming and De-Legoing

This dog is so soft and huggable... Serious Teddy Bear Therapy looks like: me sitting on the bench, trying not to cry - but the Anxiety feels like (that scene from Aliens!) it's crawling under my skin and I want to tear it out. (Aren't you glad I'm not drawing

Teddy Bear

Puppy Strolling

First, a bit of backstory with minimal relevance to the subject of this actual post... my mom and her family escaped from Estonia when the country was invaded by Russia (creepily similar to what's going on now in Ukraine?). The story is full of exciting adventures and devastating loss and

Teddy Bear

Dear Diary, despite my attempts, the dog has returned...

The Kid and I took advantage of our last few days of Vacation (from the puppy). One evening, we drove up to Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, VT for Members' Night. Food trucks!! We had delicious Munchie-Rollz - like egg rolls but with all kinds of things inside, and

Next Verse, Same as the First...

I had a few weeks without the kid or the pup - and I did get to work - and heal ... a bit. The problem with chronic pain is... it doesn't just go away. And I really missed the kid, and I'm still missing the pup. I hate not having

Teddy Bear

Did I speak too soon?

"Cheer up," she said. "Things could always be worse." So I cheered up. And sure enough, things got worse. That's the caption for the comic of my life. Seriously - I wrote that positive, happy post yesterday, and started thinking "Hey, maybe it will be OK, right?" The pup had

Teddy Bear

TeddyBear, Meet TeddyBear!

I'm sure you read the comic I posted a while back GOOD GIRL!... yes? If not, go read it, I'll wait... So, yesterday, Elsa Bear (the newest TeddyBear) got to meet Theodore Bear (the retired TeddyBear)! As you can see in the photo above, both pups look very much like

Teddy Bear

Sleep Away Camp

Elsa Bear is away at a week of training camp and I've spent the last few days trying to cram in all the things I can't do when she is here! In truth, it's not her fault I fall so far behind, it's the pain. And all the Doctor stuff.

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Sketch-notes

Happiness

Shopping

The yART SALE

One (early!) morning this week, Elsa Bear and I were just sitting on the garden bench, in the sunshine... she was sitting on my lap like a little kid and I was rubbing her belly. We just listened to the sounds of the birds and the cars and dogs barking

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Comic

Dating on the Spectrum

Geeky Girl

My "Why"

I need to "simplify", "calm the @#$%! down", and try to create income...

Animals

The Search for the Perfect Toy

Well... the perfect dog toy - other than ME! Basically, if it dangles... it's a TOY. When she latched on to my sweater, she just stood there on her back legs meditating on how perfectly her teeth fit into the weave of the sweater. Pure Zen. On the right side

Animals

Bare Bones Art

This is not my finest life drawing attempt, but that's not really the point. The point is that, even after another really exhausting week - I pushed myself to GO! I've missed the Art Circles and the Drawing Nights for the last few months and I was determined to stop

Animals

Piranha Pup and the Post That Goes Like This

Day 6... My desperate text to the Trainer: I thought we were doing a little better. But Elsa keeps eating everything and licks everything else. Last night we were watching tv and she threw up about a 1/4 cup of unchewed kibble from hours earlier. She was licking the

Elsa Bear Arrives!

I received a lot of donated dog stuff including this wonderful crate - which Elsa made her own as soon as she landed in my car. In fact, she bonded so strongly, she refused to sleep in the big fancy crate in my bedroom. I had to drag this up

Comic

"Good Girl" - The Job Interview

Elsa Bear's job interview!

Geeky Girl

Two Geeks Log Into a Chat...

For the last few months I have been working on moving my Etsy shop over to Shopify (harder than I expected) and moving everything else over to Ghost. It took me forever to compare everything, make charts, test sites, read reviews, obsess... until I stumbled over Ghost while researching Wordpress.