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