Who Am I: A Little Girl from Red Land

First, I’m just a little Black girl from Red Land. Not Redland.  There is a BIG difference.

Where did my love for being creative and art come from? Red Land. Elmore County, Alabama. Highway 59. County Road 14. Dozier Road. Mulders Church. County Road 8. Jackson Road. 67 Cox Circle. Not new Redland. OLD Red Land. Randy's corner store. Dirt roads, cotton fields, crop planes in the summertime Red Land. Picking and shelling peas with the box fan in the window Red Land. Generations of strong Black families. Yeah, you know their last names if you grew up there.......Simmons, Cox, Guice, Jacksons, Griffins, Kirk, Humphreys, Slaughter, Robinsons, Palmore, Frazier’s, Minnefield, Mitchell...it goes on. Women who were anchors of our community like, my mother Mrs. Mildred S. Guice, great aunt Mrs. Novella Cox, cousins Mrs. Sylvia Buchannon, Mrs. Gussie Lee Humphrey, Mrs. Lucy Kirk, Mrs. Magnolia Griffin, etc.  Oh, they kept you straight as a kid! And everybody had the right to discipline if you dared get out of line! Everybody had a go-to-person in the community.  My father, Mr. Henry Guice, Sr. (1951-2022), was the community electrician. We had a person for food, homegrown vegetables, getting a tooth pulled, you name it.

I have always loved coloring. My brother is the MESSIAH when it comes to drawing. We didn't have much by today's standards, but we were RICH with talent, love, and a sense of community and self-worth. Bred in Red Land. 

My mama always made sure we had paper, crayons, and pencils so we could draw and color. Express our creativity. And guess what, my mama could draw too! 

First place that let us share our creativity: Cathmagby Baptist Church. I and many others of Red Land were baptized at the outside pool in front of the big white church. We had coloring contests, posters and stuff. Bible Vocation School and Revival in the summers at Cathmagby were LIT! 

Next, winning school coloring and drawing contests. Won my first in 3rd Grade...Mrs. Kennedy's class at Wetumpka Elementary School. 

School projects that required drawing cause hey, what was a computer back then? We did it by hand! I deferred that work to my brother Henry because he sat for HOURS drawing FREE HAND from his comic books...bringing stuff to life! I needed my work to stand out, and he was the dude!

He drew it, I did my best to color it good. And got my good school grades from it.

Fast forward to Wetumpka High School. I developed a love of Calligraphy and Old English Lettering. I used regular pens because I could not afford the expensive ones, and I drew them BY HAND. Folks today can vouch for that. Christmas on the Coosa Parade Banners....I did at least one or two. Signing people yearbooks, paper bag textbook covers we made for when schools had hardcover textbooks, I drew that type of lettering on there. 

Then, I graduated at 17 and went to the Navy. Life changed for me, and all that creativity got filed away. 

I came back to the United States, a grown woman. With experiences--good and bad. Life looked different to me. Felt different. Sounded different.  

It would be years of moving, failed relationships, job losses, financial issues, fights, drinking, and finding myself. 

Then I met my second husband, Michael. Old country boy who was everything I said I didn't need. But proved to be everything God said I needed. We had one child together, Gabrielle Elizabeth. He named her. She was too perfect for us at the time and had to go back to her eternal home. 

At my absolute lowest point in my life, I threw in the towel and tried to end my life. What was life without my sweet Gabrielle? 

Then, with the love we shared, God blessed us with a little person who literally is the personification of God's love, Sebastian Alexander. 

Then life happened again, and my partner was deployed to war...again. See, my husband is a retired Special Forces Ops guy. Yall play Call of Duty, he IS Call of Duty!

So now, I’m here, working like I always have except now, I’m a wife and mother of a toddler son. One day, I noticed he took exceptionally to certain color blends. I thought I was crazy cause he was only like 18 months. 

Then, I did what my mother did for my brother and I....bought art supplies. I started to get on the hardwood floor with him to color, water paint, finger paint...anything artsy!

What I didn’t know, is that my son was reigniting what I had deep inside of me, my innate love of creativity and art. 

 I was a kid again! Then I thought, how do I use this passion to profit and spread my love to the masses?!??!

December 27, 2019 at 4:05am was the answer from God. GabbyCrafts was born. 

Crafting with my hands and my mind is my love language. It’s pure, expressive, and authentic to me. 

So, when I started learning last year from prestigious creative leaders in the industry about using AI to express creative thoughts.... I was like a kid in a candy store! I took every damn class I could find and spent hours on it. 

I taught myself to create prompts to generate the art I imagine. I use those images I create to create other products...many different products. I taught myself the anatomy of prompts and prompt generators. I taught myself the legalities of this tool and how to use it for good. And now, if you want to learn how to leverage your God-given skills for creativity for good, 

I will teach you as well. I create prompt books of my actual prompts for you to have a foundation to be creative. Creativity is inside of everyone. Make sure you use it for good...and help others along the way!

And how did it all start? From a little girl from Red Land.