Super Happy sunday 12th July - meeting Nanouke!

This past sunday (12th July) I had the enormous pleasure of meeting up with fellow Etsyian, Ana a.k.a Nanouke .. for those of you that have 'met' her virtually she is exactly as how she appears on Etsy, fun, lovely, caring, gorgeous and so terribly funny!

I left home around 10am (meant to be away earlier but overslept) and headed off in the direction of Lisbon .. 2 hours later I arrived in Ana's home town of Torres de Vedras and oops, accidently took the north exit instead of the south exit but never mind .. she came to my rescue!

We headed off to a café to sit and have a little chat. Mitsy a.k.a ArtMind had posted to me a little pressie to give Ana (I so keep wanting to call her Nanouke .. and the poor darling did get me calling her that throughout our day together). Here is Ana opening her surprise from Mitsy at the café where we sat and chatted for a while:

We got into Ana's car and headed off to the beach area of Santa Cruz .. to have a beautiful wander around this gorgeous seaside village (which by the way is one of Ana's favourite beaches)

It was an absolutely pleasantly warm to hot day .. enough to be hot but there were little cooler breezes around to cool you down a little.

We decided to walk down to this rock shown here in the water (it has a giant hole in it)

Here's Ana showing us her beautiful brooch from Mitsy and also you can see the hole in the rock behind her .. and the just beautiful beach area of Santa Cruz.

Ah huh .. we managed to ask this dear older woman to take our photo together .. after 4 or 5 attempts she managed to take this photo of us without chopping our heads off :)

The hole in the rock, rock. You see, i was thoroughly fortunate to be with Ana on this day as she was able to give me a geology lesson and tell me about how these rock formations (and hills to the side) are around 40 million years old and instead of being slanted as they are now they used to lie flat ... she's really brainy about all this!!!

This is a delightful little church that we saw in our wandering through the village of Santa Cruz.

We spent around 7.5 hours together .. chatting, chatting, laughing and chatting and laughing some more. I had the BEST day with Ana .. it was so wonderful to have this opportunity to meet her.

Ana knitted me the most beautiful bracelet .. I haven't taken the photo's of it yet (shame on me) but when I do I shall be sharing this with you as well .. it's extremely elegant and beautiful! Thank you so much Ana.

Towards the end of the day we sat up on a little hill overlooking the sea and watched the beginnings of the sun set ... we talked about so many wonderful things .. ha ha especially etsy (which is most likely no great surprise to you all) .. but not just that, about our lives, our families, our friends .. all of it perfectly natural and special. In so many ways it was like meeting up with an old friend even though this was our first meeting.

A big and enormous hug Ana, thanks so much for making my sunday one of the highlights of my 7 years here in Portugal .. I hope that we'll do this again before too long.

Just one more thing to add. The portuguese people are a truly lovely and caring 'race' of people, Ana is no exception to this but she has that something extra, extra warmth and zest.

Hugs and beijinhos, Kerrin xox

I heart Laura Slocum - etsyprojectembrace

As we walk through this life we, unfortunately, will come into contact with cancer, be it through our own experiences or through a loved one, family or friend. While this in itself is a hurdle to overcome we can build on this, gain strength and support from others and maybe along the way.

The community of treasuries within Etsy is quite amazing .. as a treasury hunter myself I have had great fortune to meet and make friends with incredible people the world over. Here we all are, creating these collections, hoping to give the coveted front page prize to others, going through and clickety clacking, commenting on each others treasuries and unbeknowing to many .. creating real friendships along the way.

Laura Slocum aka lauraslocumpainted (one of her 3 shops on etsy) whom I 'know' through these treasuries on Etsy is currently undergoing chemotherapy treatment in her dealings with stage 3 ovarian cancer. I have seen the support and caring she has and is receiving through her close personal friends within our Etsy community. Kim aka slinkymalinkicat and Amy aka ThePeachTree have organised an amazing project called Etsyprojectembrace .. to create awareness and to raise money in the research of cancer.

This is a message that laura wrote regarding her experience:

I believe that you must play the hand you’re dealt. Six weeks ago, I was diagnosed with stage 3 Ovarian Cancer. My mom died from the same. I am a huge believer in eating right, exercising, and getting regular checkups. I’ve done all those things, yet, I have cancer. WOW. That’s a life-changing situation, for sure. I just turned 46 …. (a very very young 46!) Strangely, I feel blessed. Most everyday of these 6 weeks, I’ve had a smile on my face. I’m going to play the hand I’ve been dealt in the best and most positive way I know how. I’m so fortunate my boys are older, they drive, they can do laundry and help around the house. There will always be some people in this world who have it better and some who have it worse. That’s just life.I’ve been an Etsy addict since around this time last year, when I started doing treasuries. My sister Jenn, of jennreese7 and my niece Kelly, of SweetnessJewelry, are also crazy about Etsy. The one thing I’ve learned in the past year is that Etsy has made it a point to have their competing sellers be friends through promoting each other in the treasuries. That sounds kind of funny, but, on the quest to have the “coveted” FP, we create treasuries, we comment on other treasuries, we “convo” people all over the world to congratulate them on their successes, and we make friends. Aren’t we supposed to be competing for sales?? Well, maybe some things are just more important than sales. From the moment I had a diagnosis, while still in the hospital, my Etsy friends were first on the scene – building treasuries just for me, wishing me well, offering advice, sending gifts, and a few have gone so far as to donate proceeds to the American Cancer Society in myhonor!! Just to remind you………these are people ....I’VE NEVER MET! They have completely gone out of their way to be a friend or try to put a smile on my face. I now even talk to some of them on the phone! Now, I’m not talking 2 or 3 friends, I’m talking like 30 or 40! Some people just have checked my profile and offer words of encouragement! The first day that we learned about my chemo and all the ‘ins and outs’, the ‘goods and bads’, etc., my husband went online to search for support groups. He said to me that night, “I will never do that again, I was so depressed that I had to get off the computer” I said, in reply, “I don’t need support groups, I all need are my friends on Etsy”! They lift me up on a daily basis.

It is Sunday. Tomorrow morning, I will leave my house at 7:30 am for my first round of chemo. I will have an IV drip for about 6 hours and be home around 5:00 pm. I will do that again on Tuesday, then again on Wednesday. then again on the following Monday. I look forward to 8 months of that chemo schedule, followed by another year of some form of maintenance chemo.

There are 4 things I know for sure:

1. I am a Christian and I believe God has a plan for me.

2. I believe in myself to do the very best I can do and try to help others in the process by getting my story out there.

3. I have the most wonderful and supportive husband, family and friends.

4. Logging onto Etsy everyday and hearing from my friends will keep this smile on my face, not matter what I am going through.

You can help and give support as well. If you would like to take part in helping to raise the awareness and money for research of cancer contact slinkymalinkicat or ThePeachTree for further information OR do a search on the word etsyprojectembrace on Etsy and buy one of the amazing creations that is taking part in this project. Proceeds of these sales are being donated to American Cancer Society

Life is short and life is precious .. I love to make each day count.

As I get any further links I will be adding them to this post. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Signified

YAY .. I finally did it!! I got my 2nd shop opened on Etsy. For a while I have been wanting to do this as I just didn't enjoy seeing my mosaics and magnets mixed up together in one shop. I love to make my magnets and I am so happy that I have finally got Signified up and running.

I must thank two very special friends for helping me out.

Renate from Kreativlink who gave me the right 'push' into getting off my behind to make this happen and also for helping me with the new shop name .. thanks so much .. you ARE a genius!

Frances from enchantedpond who created the banner for Signified and also a new banner for my Sigmosaics shop on etsy .. thank you so much as I am thrilled with them both!

euphorianchicstudio

I came across Yoshika's art work once in someone's treasury .. ever since then I regularly check her shop's, euphorianchicstudio and euphorianchic to sit and drool over her latest creations.

Lavendar berries 3pc Set 3D Relief Wall Art Metallic Gold Finish .. completely beautiful art work with her unique 3D signature relief

Set of 3 Flower Room Illustration Prints (Branch Version) from Yoshika's euphorianchic etsy shop which is filled with prints of her original art work and gorgeous eco tote bags

Pawprints and new work

Once again i've let time pass without posting .. so, i'd LOVE to share with you a few special things!

A few weeks back I had a request through a potential customer to see if I could custom make something 'dog related' on bowls. Pawprints seemed to be a good direction to head in. I had a discussion with my friend Mitsy and look what she came up with:

Mitsy (a.k.a Artmind) was extremely helpful and made these amazing pawprint tiles for me to use in my mosaic works for this customer (as yet I haven't made a bowl but you can see a little bit further down for what I have made). I'm really excited by these pawprints, they are completely perfect and so terribly cute!

While I was awaiting the tiles to arrive I tinkered around with my own ceramic tiles and handcut paw prints for a small bowl. I think it came out pretty well actually .. (there are 3 of these placed evenly around the bowl). The customer really loves this and has also seen the pictures of Mitsy's tiles so she's VERY excited about all of this!

Having the kids away for the weekend has been absolute bliss .. as much as I miss them it's been great just having time for me and time for making some new mosaics .. here is a sample of some of my new work in my etsy shop

Perfectly purple dish

Little lemon eggcup

TO DO LIST ....

I'm one of those people that writes lists, oh how I love a good list .. I gain a certain amount of satisfaction from crossing things off my list.

Over past months i've been building up a good supply of items to mosaic .. I stopped writing a list about what I needed to mosaic .. it's gotten a little big ....

This is a small 'preview' of some of the types of creations that you will be seeing sometime (i hope soon) in my shop.

Face painting ..

It has quite literally been a cracker of a day today .. no clouds, loads of sun and heat! Nice. The perfect day for playing outside in the garden ... and frollicking around being silly twits together .. I love that!

The my son says 'mummy can you paint our faces' .. 'please' (you know, that whining please that won't let up until you action what they want) ...

anyone would think that their father was spiderman .. it's almost always the same face requested .. unfortunately this time though I'd run out of black face paint so they had to settle for red with brown webbing ..

My eldest daughter (aged 5 going on 25) did her own .. actually i thought it was none to bad indeed .. you can be the judge ..

Gabriel and Simone

Inês

together .. spiderman RULES!