Candles by Donald or Candleguy's Place: Tzipi in Florida - The movie

Ladies and gentlemen - you must watch this little movie, it is the sweetest most wonderful thing you will see :o)

Candles by Donald or Candleguy's Place: Tzipi's Florida Adventure

Tzipi arrived to the US!

Those of you who follow the adventures of Tzipi the world traveling Flutterbutt will be excited to hear that after a long and joyful stay in New Zealand, Tzipi had arrived to her first hosts in the USA, Donald the Candle Guy and his wonderful wife Sue!

Donald writes:

Arriving from New Zealand, Tzipi was such a chatterbox with so many stories about her great adventure. She is a character.
After a day of rest she was anxious to help me in the garden. My squash was ready for harvest and I needed help. Tzipi jumped to my assistance and together we gathered a bountiful harvest.

The rest of the day was spent poolside and enjoying a fantastic day.

You can read more on his blog. I also encourage you to have a look at his beautiful candle shop. His art is truly unique and comes from a strong and loving heart, and his life story is remarkable and empowering. Tzipi is planning to spend some time in the candle workshop with him, which should be very exciting. I know I already said it before, but I will say it again - I wish I were Tzip.

Life update

Lately I have been Twitting a lot in Hebrew, mainly due to general lack of energy and specific need of support from local buddies. So here is a little life update, for those of you who read my blog but don't really know me.

My mother, with whom I am living again these past few years, has metastatic lung cancer. She has been on an amazing drug called Tarceva for the past year. For the first 9 months it had reduced her tumor, but now the tumor is growing again and yesterday the Health Maintenance Organization informed her that they are not going to finance the 4000$ the drug costs per month anymore. In short - they decided it's time for her to die already.

Obviously, we are shocked, full of rage and depressed. We have a lot of work ahead of us, in terms of appealing the HMO's decision, seeing more doctors and getting second opinions, asking different people for help, and so on. At this point in time, I am doing worse than my mom, cause she saw it coming and I didn't. She has been going through what I am going through now last week, she sure hid it well.

I am doing my best to take care of myself and mom. If nothing changes, she will stop taking Tarceva in a few days and start deteriorating. I don't know what exactly will happen and how long it will take, but there is not going to be a happy ending here.

Obviously, I am not in a very creative mood - hence the lack of interesting\funny posts and projects. I haven't been able to make a puppet in a few weeks now. Hopefully, we will get some good news soon and I will be able to recoup quickly. If not - well, that's life for you. I am aching almost more than I can bear, but at least I get to spend as much time as I can with my dear, beloved, sweet, silly, funny and wise mother. This is definitely a time I will treasure for the rest of my life. It's getting through the next few months that is the problem. Only God knows where I get strength to hang on. Well, not true. Friends, support, random acts of kindness, a silly Flutterbutt here and a silly joke there. If it weren't for love and humor, we would all be doomed.

Please keep my mom and me in your prayers, if you are the praying type. I hope I will not lose my followers because of this hard time. I am sure I will return to my old (or rather, a new and improved) cheerful self when this temporary hell is all over.

New jewelry available

Hello guys and dolls! I haven't updated my blog in a while. Honestly, I am going through a rather difficult time, and have very little patience for crafting or blogging. I hope you will bear with me through this time. I have several puppets and other projects planned, including a cute custom order I have to work on this week, and a Tzipi update coming up, so hopefully there will be several nice update here very soon.

In the meanwhile, I have been working on some new jewels for my art & jewelry shop. For some reason, it is far easier for me to create jewelry than puppets these days. Probably because the process is much faster and extremely less messy.

 Rose quartz and brown hues necklace, available here

China blue necklace, available here

Gift earrings, available here

I think, for a tired and restless designer, I am still doing rather well as far as these jewelry goes. Hopefully this will be a good sales month, last was was rather nice, even though I sell most of the earrings offline rather than online. The same goes for my Etsy for Hebrew speakers guides. Israeli customers still prefer to buy from a person than from an online shop. I wonder when (if ever) that is going to change. 

In any case, I wish you all a very nice week, and myself as well. This week we are celebrating the Shavuot holiday, so I will have two days off work, which is most welcome. Maybe I will finally be able to sit myself down and make those long awaited puppets..

Moo and sighs

This has been such a bad day for me.. The last couple of weeks have been so-so with a hint of bad, but today simply did it for me. I am tired, sad, angry and tired. My eyes burn and the only thing keeping me away from my bed, even though it's not even 10pm yet, is my wet hair.

I did get some wonderful packages in the mail today, which I will tell you about when I am more energetic. In the meanwhile, I wanted to show off my new Moo business cards, which I got for free using an Etsy gift code (the only down side on this deal is getting a Moo ad on the front of the card, which really isn't that terrible at all). They turned out so wonderful, I had to flaunt them a bit.

I usually go for the recycled matte business cards, but this time, since I used several images of my jewelry on white background, I decided to go with glossy-silky finish. I think that was a wise description. As you may know, I use these cards as a thank you note card for my Etsy customers, so most of the back is left blank for a personal note. My absolute favorite image is that of Pinky and Barbie enjoying a quiet evening togeather.

And speaking of evening and quiet, I will go to bed now in hope of waking up feeling much better. I owe you guys an update on Tzipi's adventures in New Zealand, I have not forgotten that!

Endangered species

I consider myself a pretty good illustrator. I am not learned enough to consider myself a real painter, but I do have good watercolor, pencil, ink and acrylic skills. I have even been known to sell the occasional portrait here and there. So when my niece asked me to draw her a tiger this afternoon, I had no reason to expect ending up with this on my hands.

The sweet girl refused to paint it, and said it is a strange tiger and possibly a pig. My mother had far worse things to comment on it, so I had to go find a photo of a tiger and draw a new one. We ended up with this, which she thought was very real looking.

Luckily, little Pooh ended up spilling water on the paper and we could all gladly move on to eating strawberries and drinking lemonade, free of the fear of being chased by strange and real looking tigers (or possibly, pigs).