Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Human Again

November has been a rough month for me, but I'm finally starting to feel human again.  After my last post I started getting really sick.  I struggled with it for almost a week before I finally went to the doctor.  It was that or go to the emergency room, and I've already had to go to the emergency room once this year for illness and didn't want to go again.  The doctor diagnosed me with a respiratory infection and put me on an enormous dose of antibiotics.  It still took a really long time for me to get better, and I actually didn't feel markedly better until I was done with my antibiotics.  Usually they help right away, but this was one stubborn infection.

I am still coughing a lot of junk up, but other than not particularly enjoying the flavor of the inside of my lungs, I feel pretty good.  I'm going to try to take better care of myself, working maybe one or two less hours a day, sleeping at least 8, and eating decent meals from here on out.  I have been sick since we started having wildfires in July, and I think I have had a mild infection since August.  I've been on a lot of antibiotics in recent months, but my friend told me of an all natural concoction consisting of elderberry syrup and silver hydrasol.  I think that is what finally knocked it out.  I'm going to take some every day from now on, because I truly hate missing work!

Once I felt well enough to sit at my desk (I was really too ill to do anything but cling to my sofa) I managed to get a painting done.  Then I felt so good when I got home from visiting relatives for Thanksgiving that I made another one yesterday.  I need to finish two more this week and then I will hopefully be able to finish formatting Spellbinding Darkness.  I wish I could get it ready and released in time for Christmas, but I am running out of time and have a ton of obligations that have all stacked up since I've been sick.  Maybe I still can, we'll see.

Here's the two paintings I finished:

"Winterborn", 16"x20" in Photoshop CS5 with Wacom Cintiq 24HD Tablet (yes, I finally got used to it and am loving it now!)



"Winter Spirit", 12"x20" in Photoshop CS5 with Wacom Cintiq 24HD Tablet

The top one was inspired by some stock photos I saw of a girl sitting in a big "bird's nest".  I thought a fairy emerging from one would be cute.  The second one was inspired by Snow White on the TV show Once Upon a Time.  I really like Snow White, but I am not really fond of her "normal" half, Mary-Margaret.  If she wore some of Snow White's costumes and the long hair I'd probably like her more!  ;)

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Bad Blogger

I've been a bad blogger again, I'm sorry.  My son and I have been sick for weeks with colds, and then on Monday he suddenly got really, really sick.  We made an emergency appointment with his doctor and he was diagnosed with croup and given some steroids to keep his throat from closing.  We went home and he seemed to be about the same on Tuesday, then yesterday he wouldn't eat or play or really do anything but cry.  I decided I should take him back to the doctor, so made another emergency appointment and went back.  Of course as soon as the doctor came in he was happy, wanted her to play peek-a-boo with him, and crawled right up in her lap for a snuggle.

She said his throat was probably just bothering him and to get him something cold to eat.  We talked about his lack of speech so far and she referred him to a speech therapist.  As soon as we got in the car, he started talking.

Seriously, kid?

Today we're having our first named winter storm.  I don't know why they started naming them, but I think it's kind of cool.  Brutus is currently snowing on my house.  I'm hoping I'll get a chance to take some Christmas products outside and hang on one of our little trees so I can take some nice pictures of them.  I'm also hoping I'll get a chance to paint today.  It's been too long since I got to paint.  My husband's work schedule has been really crazy lately and that means I have less time to work, especially when our son is home sick from school the one day a week he goes!

I am also hoping today I'll get orders ready and ship them tomorrow and maybe get a little closer to being done with lots of other projects that desperately need to be wrapped up.  I am not sure if I will get to paint, thinking about all that I have to do.  :(


Saturday, November 3, 2012

Long Time No See!

Recently I've been thinking about resurrecting this blog and using it for posts that are a little more personal.  I don't always want to detail everything that is happening at ttslicensing.com, but I know sometimes people are curious.

Yesterday I photographed all of our cards for this year's holiday season.  I try to make sure they can be used for Christmas or Yule, but I don't really have any cards for Chanukah or Kwanzaa.  I might try to do that next year.

This year we could only offer six designs.  Last year I handmade them as they were ordered, so I could print a variety of cards, but it was very time consuming and they were expensive to make.  This year we decided to order them from a card printing company, which meant we could only pick a few designs to keep it affordable.  See, when you order things that are custom printed, the fewer you order the more expensive they are per item.  If we could afford to order 1,000 at a time we could probably sell them for $1 and make a ton of profit, but we would only be able to buy one design and then we'd have them around forever.

Instead we ordered very small quantities of cards and only six designs, that way we could have a variety but have enough to make packs out of.  The printer sent us way more than we ordered of some designs, though, so some of the cards will probably not sell out.
They did a really nice job on them, though, and I like these a lot more than the handmade cards.  The handmade cards were nice, but they were two pieces of paper.  These are one piece.

I also got a new tablet for drawing on this week.  I use a digital tablet for drawing into the computer, and for almost seven years I have used the same one.  I really wanted one with a screen in it, and last year when the Cintiq 24HD came out my parents offered to help me get one (there was no way I could get it while still paying for the Million Dollar Baby Boy).  Earlier this month there was finally enough money saved up so I ordered it.  After a lot of shipping problems and the first one getting lost and returned to Wacom, I finally got mine on Thursday.

It is almost as big as my desk and I haven't really gotten to use it yet.  I am a little afraid to touch it but I'm hoping this weekend I'll get some time to use it.  I'm always like this when I get a new tablet, sort of hesitant and afraid of it.  Hopefully I'll get over it quickly, I miss painting!

Here are the pieces we released yesterday for our first November update:

These are all for sale at TiffanysRealm.com, of course.  :)