Eternal Love

"I Will Love You"

As long as I can dream

As long as I can think

As long as I have a memory

I will love you

As long as I have a heart to feel

A soul stirring inside me

An imagination to hold you...

I will love you.

This week's blog comes from the heart. While most of our clients are brides to be and new moms, we have been touched by many clients stories of love and loss. Our cancer awareness bracelets have meant to so much as a symbol of hope patients and their families. Whether it is a gift for a bridesmaid, a mother recently diagnosed with cancer, a sister that just gave birth to her first child or a friend who lost her only child, our jewelry continues to bring comfort and joy to the faces of our clients and that makes me smile.

We have been working with Hightail Studios for some time now in creating our initial necklaces and cancer awareness "Hope" jewelry. The owner of Hightail Studioes, Nina, lives right in Federal Hill and thus it has been a great partnership to help us expand our designs and offer customized pieces to creating lasting memories. We found the above design to be very breathtaking and we have decided to name this necklace "Eternal Love"

"Eternal Love" can be have many meanings. To me the larger circle represents a mother with the smaller circle representing her child. The stone can be inter-changed, to represent the birthstone of a child. The fact that it is a circle design implies eternity, forever going round and round..a love that never ends. To a bride to be, this necklace could represent her heart inside her new husbands, and the stone could be symbolic of the month of the wedding or colors of the wedding. The possibilities are endless. This necklace will be designs in several ways but the symbol of "eternal love" will remain throughout.

I chose to share this new design this week, as today is July 29, 2009. It is exactly 2 years after the death of my nephew, Jason, in a fatal car accident. He was my sister's only child and we miss him everyday. For those of you that do not know my personal heartache, my husband and I were pregnant and just this past July 6, 2009, we lost our baby boy. I was just 16 weeks pregnant. I have started my own personal blog, click here if you wish to follow my personal journey of love, loss and healing. The poem above was given to me by my sister during my loss. She told me that she often turns to this poem to remind herself that Jason will live forever through the love that we have for him and now for my baby Alex.

The loss of a loved one is never easy and we have seen too many close, dear friends have to deal with such a tragedy. It is through encouragement, strength and hope that we see our lives continue to thrive and we find the courage to find a reason to live. I plan to take my love for jewelry design and make that a source of healing for myself and provide hope to other families. We plan to have the Eternal Love Necklace ready for sale by end of August and we will be providing a portion of the proceeds from the necklace back to The Living Legacy Foundation, which is the organization that helped my nephew donate 5 of his organs to help save lives and the Trisomy 18 Foundation , which is the diagnosis that my son received. Each necklace will come complete with the poem above on a card and an explanation of the charity that will benefit from each sale. We welcome your comments and suggestions and we hope that you will consider ordering the Eternal Love necklace to help us make a difference.

We're BACK! While I realize that it has been over 5 month since we have blogged... I promise that we have good reason and we are fully committed to sending out loyal customers weekly blogs to keep you inspired and to inspire ourselves as well!

New Beginnings

Where do we begin? Back in March 2009, we were contemplating the idea of closing our storefront in order to focus more on custom jewelry, online orders and wholesale jewelry. Fate stepped in and our landlord was able to find a new tenant..only problem, we had to be out by March 31. Basically, we had 2 weeks to pack, sell furniture and determine how we were going to manage our business. We worked in overtime and moved our storefront to our homes. Melissa continues to do all graphic design, marketing and invitation design from her home in Bel Air and I continue to meet with clients and create unique, custom jewelry from my home in Fells Point. The past few months have been challenging and a new adventure for our business, but we have been working hard to build our Etsy site and we have now sold to 3 brides via Etsy! Katie traveled to Colombia, South America for a little R&R and inspiration for new designs for the business. Working from home is rewarding, as we get so spend everyday with our babies. Melissa's son, Julian, is going to be 2 in one month! And Katie's daughter, Elena, is now 16 months. Afterall, the name of our business, Tu Vida, means "your life". The purpose of our business is to inspire our clients for all the moments of "life". At the same time, we want a business that allows us to live a life that matters, and we beleive that we are finally at a point were our business is making a difference!

Exciting Changes!

As one door closes, another opens. We are embrassing the changes that have occured over the last few months and we are moving forward with new goals and new opportunities. So, what has been happening:
1. We are now selling via the world wide web through Etsy. Click www.tuvida.etsy.com to view our site and order through the secure site. We will be posting custom bridal orders and we are now using Etsy as we main website. Which leads me to #2
2. Tuvidaonline.com is no longer. For 2 reasons, one, we were victims of online hacking and our website was compromised and two, in an effort to try to save money, we are focusing on Etsy and our Blog to keep our customers in the know!
3. We are in the process of switching our email as well to link to our Blog and Etsy. We are asking all customers to switch to tuvidadesigns@gmail.com. Our tuvida@comcast.net email will continue to be in use for a few months while we transfer our accounts.
4. We are focusing on creating jewelry that makes a difference. We are in the process of creating new cancer awareness jewelry, jewelry for new moms and jewelry for the loss of a child. We have unfortunately seen many go through the death of a child and it's impact is like no other. Jewelry is a small token of remembrance for loved ones' and especially for the parent of the child. We will update our clients with the new designs!

Look forward to an inspirational blog each week starting week of July 26. We hope that you will be motivated to make a difference in your life and support our business in our quest to do our small part for our clients.