Still around....alive & kicking!!!

Wow...I cant believe its been 5 months already since I last blogged!

5 months....mega busy 5 months it has been! So many things have changed....

My one & only kiddo quit soccer (after 7 years of nothing but eating, breathing & kicking soccer). At first I was very sad that an important part of our lives was ending. But after 2 weeks of not having to race to practice & games 4-5x a week ....all I can say is: "it's frickn awesome!" No more fighting about packing the darn bag & making sure the kiddo does not leave the house without the water bottle, jacket or the soccer ball!!!
Nope....now its all about horses. The kiddo is driving me nuts with: "When are we going to buy the helmet? I need shoes/boots. Which horse am I going to ride?" etc, etc, etc
The other thing is that my kiddo has started to learn how to sew. One of my best friends is teaching the kiddo & I have to say....I am very surprised to see how into sewing my child is. The first project is nearly done after 2 lessons and the kiddo is actually remembering a lot of what is said & done without having to take notes. I will post some pictures to show off the progress ( I am such a proud Mama!).

Now in regards to my Etsy store: put it on vacation. Was not happy with the progress or the amount of time I had to invest in it. So I am spending my few days off to come up with a better plan. I have made 4 Etsy Banner Sets that I will upload tomorrow & take my shop out of vacation mode. If the Banner Sets sell, then I will use my time wisely & make up some more and see where this adventure goes. Until then I will continue to invest my time in a new adventure that I embarked on a month ago...
I teamed up with another best friend of mine & got a booth at an indoor flea market. Bought a cheap china cabinet & put it in the stall so we could display our jewelry & lock up whatever else we were selling that had some value. I am totally having fun with it :) Going to start making Xmas crafts & put them up for sale in the booth as well. Fingers crossed that they sell the way I want them to!
Will definitely take a pic tomorrow & post it so you all can see what it looks like & maybe give me some feedback on what could be done better.

Other than all that I have been playing around with my camera & taking tons of pictures that just need to be uploaded & digitally enhanced. Once that is done I will upload them to Imagekind.com & make prints to sell @ the flea market.

So...that was my quick update for now. I hope to keep up blogging on a regular basis again. For those of you who keep poppin by to see whats going on....Thanks :) I truly appreciate your loyalty!!!

Take care & keep up with the creativity...

Tatjana

Spring is finally here!

Well Hello :)

One month later and I can finally say: "YAY, Spring is here!"

I have not spent much time on etsy, twitter or this blog this past month. Was just too tired due to my real life job as a charge nurse on nights. But I am happy to say, as of the 7th of June I will be transferring to a  sister facility on to the day shift!!! woohoo (doing my little happy dance). I am sooooo happy - I will finally have a life again & be able to spend more time with my kiddo & my artistic side.

A few weeks back while my kiddo was at her goalie practice (soccer) I walked the park & took several snap shots of the tell-tale signs of spring. Today I finally took the time to play with 2 of the shots & actually uploaded the end results to ImageKind.com. Wanna see???

Ok...here they are...

 

Springtime-Buds

 

 Pop-Art-Buds

I will try to upload some more over the next 2 days...there are so many pics that I want to share with everybody.

And do me a favor...leave me a comment & let me know what you think. I would love to have some feed back.

Have a wonderful day and enjoy every moment of it :)

Tatjana

Time just flies....

Good morning all :)

I believe the last time I jotted something down on my blog was about 2 weeks ago.
Where did these 2 weeks go? Lets see....
I took one week off because of my birthday & all the craziness going on around me. Next thing I know another week slipped by without me even noticing. Good thing I kept busy being creative on my days off.

For my birthday my great friend Lori took me to a charity event. Play Date was fund raising & had a great event with vendors, silent auction & raffles. For those of you who do not know what Play Date is, it is a non-profit organization who's Mission is to pro­vide chil­dren with autism and other dis­abil­i­ties the oppor­tu­nity & tools to learn social skills that can help them make friends, nav­i­gate day-​​to-​​day inter­ac­tions, and build bet­ter rela­tion­ships. They do this both through group instruc­tion & inter­ac­tion and through one-​​on-​​one ser­vices pro­vided at home or in their center.

Their ulti­mate goal is to be able to offer ser­vices to fam­i­lies regard­less of their abil­ity to pay. To that end, they are apply­ing for grants and devel­op­ing fund­ing mech­a­nisms to allow them to offer schol­ar­ships for those fam­i­lies who can­not afford to pay or who have exhausted all other fund­ing mechanisms.

Play Date is in desperate need of donations & volunteers. If you would like to help please go to MyPlayDate  for more information. If a money donation is not possible they do have a wish list of items that you might have at home. Honestly, every little bit will help...and their gratitude is immense!

Anyway, the event was a blast :) Best b-day pressie I have had in years! Why you ask? Well, not only did my friend pay $10 for me to attend (which is for a good cause), but I also got a handmade tote bag, free food, won in the raffle & I got a 15 minute massage!!! woohoo

When Lori & I left we were each given a carnation & since it was my b-day, Lori gave me hers. Once at home I put them in the smallest vase I could find & decided to play with the camera & photoshop them.

These are a few of the results:

So, overall I can say, my birthday was a pretty successful one. Now all that is left to do is wonder how my friends & family are going to top it next year when I turn 4-0!!!!

For those of you who might like a print of one or more of these pictures you can go to my ImageKind.com profile. And while you are there...feel free to browse. There are 3 Galleries with a few pictures in each of them. I am slowly but surely loading some of the pictures up that I think are worthy of sharing with the world & hopefully by August I will have about 20 photos in each gallery. At least that is the goal LOL.

But for now....I am off to tend to my chores and then go & take a nap before I have to start my 6pm-7am shift tonight.

I wish you all a good day filled with lots of special moments :)

Tatjana

A week later...

Day 1 of my 4 days off: My house is in shambles, my art supplies are everywhere...in every single room - I am not kidding! Clutter galore! So I started my spring cleaning. Managed to clean my living room & half of my dining room from top to bottom. In the process I found some of my glass pendants that I really should put up on Etsy. At 2000 hrs my kiddo finally convinced me to sit down & watch a movie with her. I managed to get through the first 10 minutes of New Moon & then I was off in Nu-nu land. Woke up about 3 hrs later only to find my child had abandoned me on the sofa & was fast asleep in my bed!

Day 2 of my 4 days off: up at the crack of dawn to take the pooches to the dog park. Once we got back & had breakfast it was back to spring cleaning. Did not last very long, as I had to drop the kiddo off at a birthday party and once I got home I just could not be bothered. However, I did buy the last cabinet needed for my workshop and I lucked out & got a small freezer for free!!! yay me  So I can honestly say that even so I have not done as much as I would have like to it was a very successful day!!! lol

Will blog about the next 2 days in 2 days...maybe if I stay away from the computer I might actually get some of my other chores done.

Before I go I just wanted to share some pics of the stuff I just uploaded to Etsy over the last 2-3 days.

Hope you have a great creative & fulfilling day :)

Tatjana

Job quickly done

Just a short blog today as I really need to get ready for my real life job (which continues to interfere with my true passion). *rolling eyes*

Uploaded a few more pendants to Xxentrick Designs over the last 3 days & just wanted to share them with you.

Glacier

Snake Skin

Drop of Copper

Beaded Earth

City Lights

Fire Down Under

Ok....that's all folks! Hope you enjoyed the show...

More to come soon!!!!

TTFN

Tatjana

Glass Day

Today is "Glass" day.

Even so I love to fuse glass I have not done so in a while, because I have so much of the fused glass floating around my house it is driving me crazy! So...with that said I decided to finally put some of the pieces on Etsy.

Yesterday was a beautiful, warm & sunny day. I used the opportunity & took the pictures I needed to showcase my pendants. Today I spent the morning photo shopping them (which usually takes me forever because I am so anal about the pics). Around 10am I finally uploaded my first 2 pendants & put them in their own subcategory: Glass.

I am so thrilled with this Etsy adventure. A few weeks ago when I went to my first Etsy Entrepreneurs group meeting I was overwhelmed & afraid of all the work that needed to be done to get Xxentrick Designs up & running. But little did I know that I would actually find the time & love every moment of taking pics, uploading them, photo shopping them, describing the merchandise and posting them as well as posting comments about them on Twitter (the one thing I had sworn to myself I would never get caught up in - LOL) and on FaceBook.
Well...Xxentrick Designs is up & running....and I am running with it!


These are the 2 pendants that I uploaded this morning:

Rosa

Thicket

Homework for today: do something out of the ordinary...something you would never do & tell me about it the next time you are visiting!

Until then...

Tatjana

Another good day...

Well Hello :)

Can't believe that I have had another great day.
The goal for today was to finish up projects that were cluttering up my house.

I managed to finish up a painting that I started 3 years ago! I call it "Fleurs"

Turned out better than I thought it would. However I have been contemplating whether or not there is something missing....hmmmm...will think about it some more.

Anyway...I also finished up 3 smaller projects, and I hate to admit...I started 5 more!!!
Goal for the rest of this week will be to finish those 5 projects that I started today & finish up at least 3 more projects.  I will blog about the other projects & post pictures, but before I do so I would like to turn back the clock to last week.

Last week I spent an afternoon with my friend Lori. I abused her workshop & ended up casting some pendants.


This is the silver I used. Does not seem a lot ...

 This is the mold I made & used...(wish I would have taken a pic before I closed it with the wire).

These are the 3 pendants that I was able to caste.

  They are not finished yet...going to finish them off this coming weekend & will post pictures of them.

Ok...so that is it for today. Going to try & get one more project out of the way before its time to take my Kiddo to soccer practice.

Have a good one everybody...

Tatjana

A great week

Good Morning :)

Have not been able to blog the last few days due to having to spend time at my "other" job. Luckily it only took away 3 nights of my time.

In my free time I have been keeping up with my Etsy 2-do-list and have managed to continue to tweet, upload new items to Xxentrick Designs on Etsy, make some more new items & sell a few items. YaY

Two of the newest bracelets that I made were not even on the market for more than 3 minutes....which has totally boost my ego! So I made them again and will see if anybody else out there might like to have one.

Xxentrick Designs @ Etsy

I have started 3 other gold charm bracelets and should have them done within the next 2 days. After that I am going to concentrate on some of my other projects (i.e. painting, collages, crocheting, etc). Once I have a few items done I will get the pictures posted for all of you to see.

Until then...be safe & be happy :)

Day 3....and what a beautiful day it is!

Good morning...

it is a good morning. Yesterday evening I was obsessing about Etsy, Twitter, FB and everything else that has to do with promoting Xxentrick Designs. Constantly going back & forth between the sites to make sure that I didn't miss anything and sure enough I was missing something! I was missing a bracelet in my inventory! All I could think was..."OMG...what happened? Where did it go? Did I delete it by accident?" It took me about 2 minutes to figure out that I had made my first sale!

WOOOHHHOOOO

I did not know what to do with myself. I was pacing like a headless chicken. What to do? Who do I tell? So many things going through my head until I finally decided the first thing to do is sit back down and find out who bought my bracelet.

So the search began...I began with my email account. Yep there is the notice of purchase & the notice of payment. Checked out Paypal...yep...all the money is there. I look at the Name & Address of the buyer...omg...I know that person! lol Sure enough its my longtime friend San from England.
I go onto FB to thank her and she had already left me a message: "...told ya I wanted one!..."

So once again I am running around with the biggest grin on my face all because I have wonderful friends!

I love you all :)

Ok...now on to my next endeavor. I just signed up with ImageKind.com & have uploaded a few photographs that I have taken & made digitally "better". And yes...I have put them up for sale. One can buy the print or once can have it framed there. What I like about this site is they are good & quick with orders. High quality and I have no work!!!! lol

Here is an example of the pictures I uploaded:

Day 2 with Xxentrick Designs up & running...

Yay me! I finally did it. Etsy is once again my playground LOL

I changed some of my settings around yesterday, made a new banner & av & put my first item up:

"Calming Green/Gold" - http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=30227280

Today I put the next item up:


"Warm Hues" - http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=30218625

Tomorrow I will see what else needs to be uploaded and get that done.
Also need to think of some tweets to schedule on Hootsuite.com as I will be working Wed-Fri night & will not have the time to mess around on the computer.

So...all in all a productive last 3 days!

Thanks for popping by...have a great one everybody :)

Tatjana

Crazy Busy...

Hello, Hello & Hello...

So much for me blogging every day! lol
At this moment I am actually happy I managed to get back on within the same month.

And boy have I been busy trying to get everything going for Xxentrick Designs.

Ordered my business cards - YAAYYY
Made a fan page on FB (still need to fix it up, but its started!)
Signed up with Hootsuite, bought an inky-dinky notebook, signed up with Twitter (XxentrickDesign if you are gonna follow me!) and today I updated my Etsy Shop Policies, shipping & announcements parts. Uploaded my first item and making the next 2-do-list for tomorrow!

Wow...*phew*...I'm out of breath just reading what I have gotten done already.

Was just thinking about the next Etsy Entrepreneurs group meeting that is going to be held on April 19th...wish it was tomorrow! We will be talking about blogging - and personally I think I could do with a bunch of help.

Anyways...for those of you who are already following: Thank you very much!
For those of you who will be following: Click that follow button NOW! lol

Have a great & happy rest of the day everybody.

Tatjana

6 months later...a new beginning

Here I am again...but this time I am going to make this blog happen!

Since the last time I blogged (the one & only time I blogged I should say) a lot of things have happened and a lot of things have been done.
For one: I have learned how to silver smith! Yep...I finally did it. And I have to say....I really like the casting. I casted my very first pendant & now I have ideas for an entire collection! Goal is to have the entire collection done by September 2010 & up on Etsy by October 2010.

Second: I finally took the time & started to paint & do collages again. I am having so much fun with the mixed media & the crazy colors I have been choosing. Here are a few examples:




These 2 collages appear to be really big, but in truth, they are like 5x7 & 8x10.



And this one is even smaller...approx. 3x4?...sounds about right.

Anyway, I have just been having a blast doing these little pops of color & I did these in about 2 hours all together, including hanging them on the wall! Once I am done with this collection, which I named "Bunte Welt" (German for "Colorful World") I will take a picture with all of them hanging together and post it here. I have already been asked if I am going to sell the collection, but I have not decided yet. If I do...I will definitely post it here :D

Now to something even more interesting:

My dear friend Deb started a Meetup group called Etsy Entrepreneurs. We had our very first meeting yesterday...I am so psyched!
Met a lot of nice people with various degrees of experience with various amounts of crafts, Etsy, Advertisement & Blogging!

I cant wait until next months meeting. We will be talking about Blogging & a guest speaker has agreed to give us all the dish on how to blog properly. (yay...I need all the help I can get!)

One of the big topics of discussion yesterday that sparked my interest was business cards.
I have been meaning to make some/get some made, but never got around to doing so. And at our meeting, the most cutest business cards were given out. They are called mini cards. One can buy them at Moo.com. What I like most about this site is you can upload your own pictures & use them for your cards.The site is very user friendly, has tons of templates that one can use. I uploaded 5 pictures, used their templates for the back of the cards and in about 1 1/2 weeks I should have my cards! Yay Me ... LOL

To close this entry on a happy note I have added the picture from our lovely meeting last night and am looking forward to adding more as time passes & the more meetings we have.


It was so nice meeting you all :)

Tatjana