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Balls with wings…

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Opening a new store in Korcula has been a huge challenge, paperwork is endless, my language skills are inadequate and there is so much to learn.  We have now moved on from the issues of opening and need to fill our store. 

Adolf has been working long hours, creating beautiful filigree jewels.  Watching him work is endlessly fascinating for me, I still marvel at the skill & patience that is involved in creating such intricate pieces of jewellery.  Beautiful wearable art works are now emerging in our store and we are creating some fun displays.  Whilst it is great to have a fine display for us it is even better when we can sell his work (pay some bills!) and have happy customers leaving our store.

Last week the pieces above were sitting on the work table when we had a visitor from Quebec looking for some earrings, unfortunately this work was not finished; so I asked

‘How long are you here?’

‘For one more week’, was the reply

‘We can finish this pair for  you, it will be no problem, please come back on Thursday evening’

You can see the finished product below, the balls have wings – they are now in Quebec, Ms Quebec was delighted with her earrings, and for us it is a great feeling to know that we were able to bring her a small amount of joy that will last a lifetime. 

A Day in the Life

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Today has been a great day to write about, and it ain’t over yet – having visitors from abroad is the perfect excuse to play and I’m loving it.

The day started with coffee and cakes from Marco Polo bakery and a big blether in the sun.   Bikini on, ready to swim, what a great way to start the day.  Hilary and I swam at the bottom of the ‘street’  that we work on.  After this we purchased a small coffee machine, then back to the shop (www.facebook.com/SebaDizajn) to try out the new machine – it’s great.  Coffee on site is a good thing and hopefully a way to save us some cash as both Adolf and I enjoy our coffee a lot and regular stops at our favourite coffee shop (Caffe Stari Grad) throughout the day were adding up… 

Next mission was ‘save a cat’, Hilary being a keen animal lover had earier spied a wee poorly cat that looked like it wold barely make it through the week and decided that she would like to take it to our local vet and save his wee furry life. We spoke to the vet and he was expecting us at 12 so we had to go capture the cat, esier said than done it turns out.  Despite the cats apparent ill health there was no way it wnated to be transported in a box by us to the vet.  Oh dear, we made several attempts before speaking to the vet, 

“Do you have  a cat box we can borrow?”

“NO, sorry the box is not available today, it will be here again on Monday”.

Decision made to leave the cat till Monday, bring him some food in the mean time and monitor his condition – will keep you posted on his progress and try and remember to add a photo.

“What now?”

The decsion was to eat, and we sat at U Maje i Tonke & sampled their chickpea salad, hummus & fresh bread (all very good).  It is so nice to have visitors to blether with, Hilary and I sat for about an hour and chatted before me feeling like I really ought to give Adolf a break from the shop.  So we walked over to Seba Dizajn and watched some jewellery being created for a while before taking another stroll.

I am now on the afternoon/late shift, and have just sold one of our beautiful silver filigree beads and a matching pair of earrings to a lady from Chicago, lovely to talk with her and share some of the filigree story with her. 

Now I have a second pot of coffee brewing and I am catchin up on my ‘homework’ – I am two days behind on both of Nikki Pilkington’s 30 Day Challenges that I am currently signed up for – the Facebook Business Page Challenge and the Blog Challenge… Challenge 7, ‘A Day in the Life’ now completed.  Wonder what’s next?

Cheers

Ruth

Something Nice

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Today I want to share how great I feel when I think about my lovely friends, near and far in this world.  Yesterday I took the early morning ferry to Split to meet a friend from Scotland whom I had not seen for a year.  Thanks for visiting Hilary, it is great to see you and to have this week to swim and chat, wine and dine. 

Life in a new country and culture is interesting and fun, but often isolating, mostly due to my lack of language skills!  It’s pretty hard to develop any friendships with a great depth with my current lack of skills.

So, to all of you near &  far, thanks for being part of my life.

My Mums

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It’s 10:00am in New Zealand and midnight here in Korcula and I’ve just had a big chat with my Mum (she’s in NZ).  I love that technology allows us to keep in touch so easily, we were chatting on skype.  Mum is a pen and paper correspondant, and I love that as well, I have a great pile of her letters collected from the years I’ve been living away.

I miss my Mum, she’s great.  I have four older brothers, three lovely sister-in-laws and a bunch of great nieces and nephews.  None of whom I get to see often enough.  I’ve been living on the opposite side of the world to my family for 12 years now and missed a lot of family birthdays and other events.

Now I have a new family and a second mother, she’s great too.  Mrs Seba senior and I get along really well, I’m not sure how much of this is due to my serious lack of ability to speak any Albanish or Croatian?!! Smiles, hugs and nods go a long way, but not far enough.  There are so many things I wish I could say and share with her.

(Number 1 being how great her son is!)

The tourist season here in Korcula is a very short one and I plan to use the winter months to learn some more Croatian. Will keep you posted on my progess… so far my progress is Polako – slow.  I look forward to learning some language and cooking skills with my mother in law – I have managed to learn quite a lot of food words! Important things first.

However, it’s late and I am catching the 6am ferry to Split in the to meet a dear friend from Scotland who is visiting us and the sun.

I hope I learn to liven the blogs up soon!

Please let me know if there is anything you would like me to share or write about.

Best wishes

Ruth

Where can I find traditional filigree jewellery?

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SEBA Silver is a  fresh new business specialising in traditional filigree jewellery, my husband and his family have been practising the filigree art for over 500 years.  The Seba family pride themselves on creating stunning and original pieces of jewellery to be treasured for a lifetime.

Each piece is a labour of love and involves many hours of work.

If you would like to know more about the filigree tradition or our work leave your questions here and I will get back to you.  Or visit us at

www.sebasilver.com

or folllow us on facebook;

www.facebook.com/SebaDizajn

Can’t see what you are looking for?

Let us create a special something for you, send us your ideas and we can design something especially for you.

Cheers, Ruth