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. 

To all the Points I've lost before!

 

This PicKleTEL parody  has been rolling around in my brain for a long time 

and it was finally time to put a little reel together for it!  

Thanks to Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson of course for the fantastic inspiration song for this parody, 

(To all the girls I've loved before). 

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!

Pickleball Party, sing-along to pickleball parodies~!

My whole mission from the get go was to get people singing along together. It always has been. Even when I was in a touring band I would hold the microphone out to the audience to hear them sing. It's my favorite part of being a musician, hearing you. 

Me onstage  as Agnetha in Arrival Canada's tribute to Abba....and the awesome singers who helped....

These last few months my brain has been filling with pickleball songs and images I need to create, but  instead of doing so I've been spending every blipping moment figuring out the Shopify  platform.

It felt like work. So I jumped ship. Well I jumped off the expensive superliner and onto little moterboat. I understand that boat much better and have no need to cross oceans anyhow so that ticket was just too expensive. 
 

The whole reason I started the Shopify is because my previous  ARTist shops were not related solely to me and so when I sent customers to my store they could easily get lost on the site (since it could direct  them to other artists). That's tough when you spend a lot of time catching peoples attention. 

So I thought if I controlled the store, then at least I wouldn't lose people. 
What I didn't anticipate was the enormous cost of involving a platform such as Shopify as well as all the other pieces of the puzzle which  eat up every penny you might make. 

If a shop owner gets lucky and needs a web developers help to deal with expanding, well  you now have to pay what feels like lawyers hourly rates to get things done, and finding someone you trust to do that in a faceless internet world, is not easy. 

So just as I was about to start ramping up advertising I pushed the big red button instead of the green one. 

You see as all this was happening the ARTist platforms began streamlining so that ARTists wouldn't lose their customers so easily, they gave us a shop, not just a spot in their shop. Smart. 

SO, my problem was, I was ahead of the curve and started solving my problem a just a bit too early. It took the larger platforms a bit of time to reach my needs. 

And I realized, since  they do now, just as I was getting more and more bills to my store, my old platform was offering to do it, right. SO I thought, why am I not making use of it? And so I dove into this place ARTIST SHOP



The result is I have time to do more of the things I love, including taking my Pickleball Parody songs out on the road. This Christmas season for any pickleball event I went to I brought my little guitar and a handful of parody lyric sheets. (Taken from my Pickleball Sing - Along book). and PS I realize I need to make a Sing Along book 2 because I have a whole paddle bag full of NEW tunes that are not in book one, so stand by for those..... but I digress....... on with the show.....

A few of these people had seen my videos but not even close to all of them....so this was the first time that MOST of these people had seen or heard any  of my songs. But with my handy lyric sheets, it was easy to get them singing.........so easy.........

 

How much fun will this be for any pickleball event?  Pickleball dinner, tournament, festival or getaway? 

I'm your Pickleball Parody girl, let me know if you would like to know how I can help you do this! :) 

Rachael! 

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. 

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!! 

@LadyGibraltar  aka Lee Whitwell helped me pull this one together by getting some of her talented Pickleball PRO's to join in the fun of this parody! Kudo's to Katy Perry's tune of course and watch for her making waves with some pretty massive heavy hitters in the Pickeball world.  
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

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  

I'm breaking up with myself, and I'm so happy about it.

Ok maybe I'm not breaking up with ME but I'm breaking up with something I've worked very hard on for well over a year now. It's my store. I'm breaking up with my old storefront. 

All that art I made is gone, blown up and I already have a new store lined up 

Last summer while a lovely lady was making a number of purchases in my store,  she wrote and asked me to make a T-shirt for a pattern she favored (because I had not designed one yet). So, of course gladly I made her the T-shirt, which she added to her orders.  Shortly after her order arrived,   I checked with her to see how everything was. 

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. 

I thought about it a lot. 


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. 

This woman is a customer however, she committed to me by purchasing, and I felt like I had failed her.    

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)

 

  Here is my free ARTIST shop. :) 

This site will invite you to sign up but you can bypass that, you are not obligated to sign up to look or shop! :) 

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)

The video above features not only my friend @Lee Whitwell but also a few  other outstanding young professional pickleball players who she wrangled in to guest star with her, and  it's so been exciting to watch the PPA and MLP and spot these players who are in my video, out there being awesome on the courts. In fact the same day I got the video part from Rachael Rohrabacher my hubby and I watched her win a gold medal with Anna Bright. I've since seen them all playing on stream and become a fan of each of them, so  thank you SO much again pickleball stars!  (and speaking of Pickleball Stars.... )

Now I know for a fact that many of you don't really watch pickleball on TV (or stream it) because you tell me so, and that's a real shame. If I can inspire you all to do one thing for your pickleball self that will inspire you and ignite some fire in your happy little pickleball heart, let it be to tune in to some pro pickleball and give it a watch.  Admittedly it's getting weirdly harder and easier at the same time to watch. There is more pickleball streaming than ever before but no one knows where to watch it, so it is a challenge, but most of the big Pickleball Forums share great clips and so if you scroll through those it's a place to start. They usually post when there are tournaments streaming as well. 

If you know this game it's really worth watching it being played at the highest level, especially  when  you know just how hard it is to be THAT consistent.....you will keep tuning in to be inspired to move your own feet more if nothing else. 

Anyhow, once again, I digress......  

Love and stuff, Rachael 

#Idinkedtheball, #katyperry, #pickleballparody, #pickleballbutterflies, #pickleballartwear, #rachaelchatoor, #pickleballclothes, #pickleballgifts #ladygibraltar #leewhitwell #rachelrohrabacher