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Welcome back art lovers, how have you been? It’s so nice to visit with you again, I hope all is well with you.

I have been quite busy these past two weeks & I am very excited to share these things with you. There has been a lot going on with my adventures in ukulele painting & I couldn’t be happier about it! I’ve been busy creating ukuleles through my artist residency for Ukulele Kids Club, Inc. & one of the most recent ukuleles that I was given the honor of designing & painting for them was their 10,000th ukulele donation. A couple of weeks ago they presented their 10,000th ukulele to a very deserving 7 year old child at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. This hospital is a non profit pediatric medical facility, founded in 1956 and has provided exceptional care for medically fragile children. UKC is a long-standing partner with this hospital & they have been donating ukuleles to children since 2013, the year they were founded. UKC’s mission is to support the healthcare of these medically fragile children through music therapy & the donation of ukuleles. Each instrument given by the UKC encourages & gives a medically fragile child comfort, an outlet for creativity & a way to deal with their situation in the present day and also for years afterward. It is truly mind blowing for me to think that in just 7 years, the UKC has been able to support 10,000 children with their music therapy & ukuleles! The healing that takes place through music is incredible & the UKC is doing such an amazing job at spreading this healing to these children with their ukulele donations. It fills my heart with such gratitude & happiness that UKC puts their trust in ME to create custom themed ukuleles for their recipients.

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*If you want to learn more about Ukulele Kids Club, Inc. or see some of the past ukuleles I have created for them, click on the “Ukulele Art” tab in my menu bar on my website.*

This week, I am also in the process of preparing more ukuleles to be painted in the near future. I am prepping more for UKC, but I am also preparing one for my own personal use. I have just started to learn how to play the ukulele myself & I am having a blast learning. I’ve been using online tutorials via YouTube & so far it’s been a lot of fun. I have a long way to go before I can say, “oh yea, I can play the ukulele”, but I’m looking forward to the journey & practicing. As I’ve said, one of the ukes I am about to paint is for me & along with learning to play I am really excited about the art that I’ve drawn up to be painted on it. It will be Grateful Dead themed….designed in honor of my favorite GD song, ChinaCat Sunflower. I’ve posted a photo below to show you what I’ve achieved so far on the design. I can’t wait to get started painting on this uke & when I am finished you will be the first to see! Hopefully by then I’ll have a better grasp on my ukulele playing & not only may I share with you the art design I’ve done on my uke but maybe I can give you a video of me PLAYING my ukulele!

Do any of you play the ukulele? I’d love to know about when you learned to play, how old you were when you learned & if you still play regularly. I’d also like to know how long it took you to learn to play & any tips you might like to share with me on how I can improve my learning & maybe some techniques you find helpful that I could practice!

There is one more thing I want to share with you! If you would like to support the Ukulele Kids Club mission and at the same time have an opportunity to WIN a custom painted ukulele by ME, Gemini Pearl, (with the theme of your choice) you can enter the #10KSmiles raffle/challenge that UKC is hosting right now.

You can enter in two different ways:

1. You can post on your social media (Instagram and/or Facebook) a video of you playing your ukulele to your favorite song & be sure to tag it #10KSmiles

2. You can make a donation to UKC in the amounts listed below, depending on how many entries you want to purchase. You can go to theukc.org/donations to purchase.

Well that’s all the things I’ve got going on right now my friends! Thank you so much for dropping by for a visit & a chatting with me. Please visit the comment section & say hello, let me know if you are a ukulele player & give me your best tips & techniques for helping me with my own playing journey! I’ll talk to you all again very soon! – Gemini Pearl