Thursday, March 28, 2024
Just a little bit of an artwork share. Pickleball eyeball crying pickleball paddle tears.
I've decided to share the process and posts and get it out there. People are stealing it but I did it first. :)
Wait till you see what's coming next.
Sunday, March 3, 2024
What is Pickleball ARTWear? I show you as I create the Pickleball Mermaid.
What is Pickleball ARTWear? I show you as I create the Pickleball Mermaid.
Find the image on gift items here: T-Shirts by Pickleball ARTwear by Rachael Chatoor | TeePublic
Monday, January 22, 2024
Explainer and introduction video, who is Pickleball ARTwear? (Rachael Chatoor, pickleball parody creator for PicKleTEL records)
Here is a little last minute shot of the products before I closed my store. I still have the designs for all of these so they can enter the market place again when I decide I have the right ducks in a row. :) (Or if someone wants to buy them) Also....more about everything here: Pickleball ARTwear explainer site
As you may have been following I have had my own history with a company.
You see I recently noticed their new website and rebrand included my own older brand name:
I also wrote to them before posting publicly, and let them know they were using my brand name and that while I had just closed my own shopify store I was still using it and had published books and clothing with that brand name on it, and still was doing so.
In a really small space such as pickleball and seeing as they had gone all the way through Nationals introducing their brand while not using my name but just their own, I thought they could easily pivot and change it back up, I mean it's a small pickleball world and clearly I've been using it, so why not?
But no. My comments got deleted or ignored and eventually, the point just blatantly missed.
Somehow my reply got turned into a reel on my own Instagram page and it turned out so perfectly with the image that it was attached itself to, I left it up. The power of the response was just stunning to me.
How can anyone be unsure of the problem here?
This is a small, small business. I am a small time artist, I've done nothing but support other small biz and women and try to make people smile and laugh with art and music.
Even if they didn't know, once they did... they ghosted me and just kept going or said the above, that they don't see the problem.
My thoughts are simple really and inspired my latest t-shirt design and meme. (you can get this image on a shirt, without the words) See design here
The world starts to heal when we speak up about wrongs we see, rather than ignore them.
I'll be happy to take every bit of my ugly opinion down as soon as they stop being facts (and/or using my name).
Rachael
Monday, January 1, 2024
PicKleTEL pickleball parodies VOLUME 2
If you are here you may have seen the short version video of PicKleTEL Volume 2 going around somewhere.
Here is the longer version to give you more of a taste of the tunes and following in the posts on my blog (just scroll back a few posts), you will find the full versions posted:
Ever since I started making pickleball parody REELs and short videos I've envisioned the K-Tel format as a teaser video. It's how I grew up listening to music and I vividly recall watching the K-Tel commercials. My allowance money was just enough to buy a K-Tel album from the swap meet every once in a while. I guess the nostalgia never left me and I still get the feels over it. Volume 1 was a pile of fun and I've just gotten deeper into pickleball and made more REELs since so here we are with Volume 2. I don't see an end.
If I had more skill and videography skills and more than an iphone I'd do a better job of it all but I think I get the point across so I'm sticking with my role as creator. Make the rough drafts up and share them out. When things need a polish there is a time and place and people who love to do all that.
Artists parodied in this video are as follows:
Straight Down the Line: Inspired by Neil Diamond's: Sweet Caroline
Pickleball Stars: Inspired by Nickleback's: Rockstar
I Dinked the ball: Inspired by Katy Perry's: I kissed a Girl
Don't need your Advice: Inspired by Almost Paradise made famous by Mike Reno and Ann Wilson
Aced it!~ Inspired by Miley Cyrus Jaded
Pickleball Inspired by John Cougar Mellencamp's small town
Pickleballin: Inspired by The Beach Boys Surfin Safari!
MY GRATITUDE For all the great pros and friends who participate with me. Each are credited on their videos. :) Also a final mega shout out to Lee Whitwell @LadyGibraltar on Instagram my pickleball parody pal!
PS the latest.....
See ya soon pickleballers!
Saturday, December 23, 2023
Is this my favorite Pickleball Parody?
It's hard to pick a favorite but I do have a long list to choose from, I'm almost ready to write my next Pickleball SING along book in fact.
The latest is a tune I've had in my head for well over a year but I just haven't gotten around to finishing the parody or making a track, until I blew up my shopify store so I could focus on just being a musician and artist rather than a web developer. (which is what you seem to have to be to have a shopify store)
Lee and I had just finished our Christmas parody and I had a few minutes to chew on the idea and well, without any further ado I should just let you play it!
Get your singing voice out....this one you WILL want to learn and sing along to!
Inspired by the song Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond.
Thursday, December 21, 2023
Santa Baby, Pickleball Carol - Featuring Lee Whitwell and Rachael Chatoor
Just sharing a little holiday ditty we cooked up!
Merry Christmas from PickleTEL records!
Saturday, December 9, 2023
More Pickleball Parodies and a challenge!! Pickleball on the BRAIN~
ACED IT!!
Here we have a fun little ditty that I created based off the cheeky looks my hubby gives me when he makes a killer shot I can't get..... Thanks as ALWAYS to the formiddable Lee Whitwell for playing along and including more pickleball pros in our madness!
DON"T NEED YOUR ADVICE!
The original love song from Footloose (recorded and sung by Mike Reno and Ann Wilson) inspired this pickleball parody.
Lee Whitwell is my go to girl for Pickleball advice and we cooked this parody idea up together, please find her on Instagram @LadyGibraltar / ladygibraltar To my friends, thank you for being such good sports! I adore you all! Find more of these parodies at my pickleball song group on Facebook! / 774898234227978 This video also features a harmony track with my friend Catherine St Germain! Catherine is often the go to girl to sing Almost Paradise in concert when the lovely Ann Wilson can’t make it. Please go find Mike Reno’s legendary band Loverboy online, they are touring all summer! https://www.loverboyband.com/ And locate Catherine St Germain on her pages to find her upcoming Ladies sing the Blues performances, also if you go to see Loverboy this summer you might see a real version of the original Almost Paradise song with her and Mike ! It’s epic! https://freshmag.ca/pursuit-365-day-2... Parody of Almost Paradise original love song to the movie Footloose written by Dean Pritchford.PICKLEBALL STAR!
In the spirit of Nickelback’s song Rockstar! I give you Pickleball Star, because we are ALL super stars! Disclaimer: As always, this video is made all in great fun with no message intended, and my thanks go to the great friends who play along with me to make them. (I have to make this disclaimer now because a 4.5 recently said to me that they didn’t want to give me any advice because of my parody of Almost Paradise; Don’t Need Your Advice. Oh my god please, I suck people, I DO want your advice…😅 this music stuff? its just art of my observations of what I sometime see online 😇😂) To the models who wear my Pickleball ARTwear thank you eternally for sparkling on the courts wearing my pickleball patterns with all the surprises and secrets right out in the open, and thank you for the photos! To Lee Whitwell my parody partner in crime thank you for sending me your cameos, you are a gem and a gift to the pickleball world! Many of the Pro player videos were taken on a Pickleball Getaways Vacation that hubby and I took. It was amazing and we are going again. Please visit the pros via their Instagram handles. I was lucky enough to catch some actual pickleball superstars! Tournament photos are from Nationals in Palm Springs and/or other travels! Also the first look at my custom doubles wear! Team Shurgelo at the end of the video are wearing their new crop tops with an original pickleball pattern I custom designed for them! (I can do this for anyone.) Have fun friends! If you have my Pickleball Sing Along Book (from Amazon) I will be linking the Pickleball Getaways QR code at the back of this book, to this video once I upload it to Instagram. #pickleball #pickleballsong #pickleballartwear #pickletel #pickleballgetaways
I DINKED THE BALL!!
Even though I am a supporter and their customer they still manage to miss me completely but hey, it's a big world out there, one day they may notice me.
Next......if you have been following along with my parodies you might know all of these tunes represented on my latest shirt: Pickleball on the BRAIN.
ITs a brain full of paddles. Plus the names to all my pickleball parodies because they become such earworms. But here is the fun part. If you know the tunes you can get this shirt then challenge people to point to any item and you can sing a pickleball song for it.
Who can do it? I know I can. Find it at my Nifty Pickleball Gifts store!~ rachaelchatoor.threadless.com
Monday, November 27, 2023
Am I wearing my top backwards? Not on purpose I'm not.....
So my new clothes have arrived ( a couple of my samples, anyhow ) and I am more in love with them than I hoped I would be. I immediately set to work on trying them on and decided to film the process and intro the clothes with whatever film I captured. See the video below to get a glimpse of my new goodies.
If it seems like I'm delighted with the quality of the items I am, I am so happy the colors in real life look as beautiful as the colors in my imagination and on-screen, plus the make and fit are reliably supeior to the ones I could design on before. These are all I was hoping for and I'm so excited.
This video I must admit I laughed at and watched a few times. It was because it made me laugh that I even kept my ass in there as I was pulling my pants up over it. But it looked so ridiculous to me and I tried so hard to recover and the dragonfly looked so cool I decided to keep it in.
And guess what.
The dragonfly goes on the front.
How
did
If it seems like I'm delighted with the quality of the items I am, I am so happy the colors in real life look as beautiful as the colors in my imagination and on-screen, plus the make and fit are reliably supeior to the ones I could design on before. These are all I was hoping for and I'm so excited.
This video I must admit I laughed at and watched a few times. It was because it made me laugh that I even kept my ass in there as I was pulling my pants up over it. But it looked so ridiculous to me and I tried so hard to recover and the dragonfly looked so cool I decided to keep it in.
And guess what.
The dragonfly goes on the front.
How
did
I
miss
that?
Honestly until a friend of mine asked me which way to wear it? I had NO idea I was wearing it backwards.
What an introduction. I've decided it's perfect and I'm keeping it in.
If anything it will give people something to scratch their heads over. Giggle.
Anyhow, I don't expect people to wear all this stuff together by the way. My items are not meant to be worn "party on the top and party on the bottom" always, unless you love literally being ALOT. Then by all means have at er.
Personally I usually wear a top OR a bottom and then I pair them with a matching solid from one of my other favorite brands. The pants I am wearing in this video are Lululemon
The fit is true (I'm a large in most brands. A medium in generous brands and XL in fancy shit) I'm wearing large for everything.
Have fun and enjoy the new stuff, I sure am! xo
Saturday, November 18, 2023
I'm breaking up with myself, and I'm so happy about it.
She said she LOVED all the items but sadly she would have to wait till she lost a little bit of weight, before she could wear the capris. Sadly I didn't have a larger size capris or leggings to offer her so, she hadn't made the wrong size choice, I had simply only limited sizes in my store.
This made me feel a kind of way, and it was not a content feeling, knowing that my new friend was unable to wear my weird and wonderful clothes, simply because I didn't have the right products to suit everyone out there.
As a musician first and artist second, I want to run the "business" side of things, not at alll.
Putting together a store and learning all the dreary numbers and tables and htmls and ins and outs and getting computer friendly has not been an easy hike at all, especially when all I want to do is make things look or sound pretty. And I finally had my store running even if it wasn't serving everyone.
But it still bothered me that I couldn't serve everyone, and if the only thing in my way was myself, well I've learned how to do things before. When publishers wouldn't even look at my book idea a couple of years ago, I learned how to self publish. Now I have two books, the second one I also published entirely myself (well my husband supports me in everything I do but that's a whole other love story), because I could. I just had an idea and made the book. So what I am getting at here is that I find forced growth is often a good thing or at least a catalyst. I embrace it (often after a bunch of complaining, but I digress).
And thanks to my aforementioned new friend (who loves butterflies by the way), my thinking turned into inspiration. Inspiration to do what I had never done before and get off my ass and source a manufacturer who could provide ALL the products I needed.
Look, I've had people write to me and ask me to get larger sizes or to make shorts, or long sleeve sun shirts, or leggings with pockets etc....... but it's an enormous task to change everything.
So I was determined to at the very least, find some leggings in her size that I could customize for her, even just to send her as a unique original pair, just for her.
Never in my wildest dreams did I realize her simple request for some Pickleball Butterfly clothes would inspire a radical blow up of my store.
You see I found a supplier with the best leggings I could locate. They looked amazing online, crossover yoga band, pockets and seemingly superior construction to the ones I had in my store at the time. The best part is they went up to size 6X and that's several sizes above what I even needed, so things looked golden, I dug in and designed a pair.
While on the new site designing I noticed some other items with similar broad sizing that were empty canvases, just waiting for me to create on, pieces that people had been asking for. Different cuts, better materials, More significant construction.
I wanted to see this stuff. It is pricier and I wanted to see how it feels in real life, to see if it was worth the extra cost, so I made some longer athletic shorts and an athletic short sleeved top as well and sent off my order.
When they arrived I was so impressed with it all that I found that my wheels where turning. This stuff is too good for me not to offer it. It would be excruciating, but I had to do this.
So I set out looking to teach myself how to RE-do my store. I didn't do it without help. I did as much as I could by myself first, and then when it got scary, I searched and found a web expert who lives close enough by who helped get me running and then due to family emergency could not continue the job.
Which paralyzed me. I was not interested in floating alone again without someone I could trust holding my hand through the web developer stuff, so, I blew it up again.
Yes, after a thousand dollars of education I had a beautiful store that I realized I didn't want to run because the stress of it took all the fun of the art away.
And this new site lets me just be an artist. The Artist Shops.
basics like Tshirts and hoodies as well as all sorts of new items like mugs, towels, jackets, stickers, sweatshirts and more will cost you LESS because that all has been moved onto my ARTIST site where it's not my own store, I am merely an artist who designs using the THREADLESS site where you get the items from directly, and I get a commission. It cuts out the middle man, the shop and sends you to the source. If I put these basics in my store I have to charge more and do all sorts of work to do so. So I didn't. Look for all these new gift items and basics at my ARTIST store HERE.
Canadian residents please note some items will be shipping internationally and duties could apply.
And to my new friend, she has her new leggings now, and loves them, and I am so grateful to her for her open comments because it spurred me and all of us, to a better place. See the old store I blew up. (I still have all these designs and more ready to go digital if someone wants to partner with me)
And for your listening enjoyment I leave you with my latest #pickleball parody. "I DINKED the ball and I liked it" based on @Katy Perry's iconic tune I Kissed a Girl which I used to sing with @Hitzone a hundred years ago. :) (also please take some time, Katy has a foundation called Firework Foundation and she serves underprivileged kids with her inspiring camp)
Love and stuff, Rachael
#Idinkedtheball, #katyperry, #pickleballparody, #pickleballbutterflies, #pickleballartwear, #rachaelchatoor, #pickleballclothes, #pickleballgifts #ladygibraltar #leewhitwell #rachelrohrabacher