Wednesday, March 31, 2010

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

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

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

Sunday, March 28, 2010

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.





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 :)

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

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:

Monday, March 22, 2010

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

Sunday, March 21, 2010

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

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

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