Tammy Winand was born in York, PA in August 1968 and graduated Dallastown High School in 1986. She briefly attended West Chester University, where she studied French and creative writing. She relocated to central Florida in 1992, living in various locations around the state until autumn 2006. Since then she has resided in Albuquerque, NM and Grand Canyon, AZ with extended visits to Ireland and the United Kingdom, as well as holidays in Provence and Paris.
In May 2008 she will begin a seasonal job at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

Her interest in an artistic career developed during junior high school with a passion for writing and has since turned to focus on visual arts. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in literary magazines, including her own "CrypticFragments Journal". Although that publication was short-lived, the name stuck with her as she moved on to other creative pursuits.

Since 1989 she has been selling paintings, mixed media work, photography and ethnic~inspired jewelry as a source of extra income. (More on these pursuits in the sections below.)

Between 2005-06, she discovered a range of internet marketing opportunities, beginning with CafePress, later expanding into Squidoo and, more recently, Zazzle. She is also exploring HubPages. Her goal is to at some point be able to focus exclusively on these as a source of income!

This is my absolute passion. I have finally found a way to bring together my love of travel and diverse cultures with my desire to create and share my creations.

I have created the CrypticFragments World Emporium, a collection of Zazzle galleries, each focused on the colors and designs of a different area of the world! This brings together my passion for travel, art/design, interacting with the public...etc. As of today the "W.E." consists of seven linked galleries:

*Asia Major, a showcase of Chinese and Japanese art and design
*Tropiques, a gallery of Caribbean and other tropical island flair and style
*Mediterranee, featuring the colors of the Mediterranean
*L'Afrique, devoted to items with an African Colonial or safari theme
*Western Skies, dedicated to western & southwestern Americana
*Tam's Tees, the tee shirt stop which carries designs from all the world galleries plus others
*Postcard Paradise, which is the one stop postcard shop!

A Celtic gallery is in the works, and heaven knows what other ideas may emerge!

I welcome you to visit, simply to view my designs without purchasing. I welcome and value constructive feedback. Please leave comments on the blog!

I thank you for allowing me to share this here.

Best wishes everyone!

Squidoo lets me indulge some of my old passion for writing without the stress of creating characters, making them dance, and hoping someone else finds them interesting enough to pay for. I can create lenses which I know will at minimum have an audience of other lensmasters. It is also a school for me, where I am learning about basic html, SEO, and many other interesting topics!

I currently have 79 live lenses. For the complete list, please see My Lensography. Below you will see the ones I currently think are my best efforts.

I can't seem to resist sharing everything I am working on and thinking with the rest of the world. It started when I got my first pen pal during seventh grade. I soon had correspondents on almost every continent who all wanted to know what I was doing! When I was introduced to the internet in 1998 (or so it opened up a world of new opportunities. Soon I was participating in public forums and using emails to report on my where~abouts and activities to friends and family in other regions.

Eventually I discovered MySpace as a personal network and later as a way to advertise my creative pursuits. MY MySpace gets more into that aspect of life. I have a FaceBook profile but am not finding it to be of much use...yet.

And then there's blogging. I blog and I blog and I blog... sometimes daily, sometimes intermittently, on all areas of my interests. For the curious, pop over to The Blog Life of An Artist to find out more.

I have joined twitter and Digg recently. I am also on lensroll.com and the Isle of Squid. I have some stuff on Bumpzee and Zimbio but can't seem to figure them out! (Have I mentioned that internet savviness is NOT my forte?!)

It may not seem like it, but I actually do have a life away from the computer! And it is about to get more active in a few weeks when I head to Wyoming to start my seasonal job at Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park (for details on how to get a job like this yourself, please see Adventure Workers and CoolWorks).

When I am not on the computer or working a tourism-related retail job, I enjoy being in the great outdoors, especially if it involves water and/or mountains and canyons! I am a Leo, naturally curious and rather restless (and sometimes reckless). I take LOTS of pictures of my travels and adventures (see my Digital Photography Showcase).

I like books and magazines and there was a time when I actually READ them. Nowadays I seem to be more interested in their imagery as a source of inspiration. It's easy for me to spend several hours in a bookstore cafe with a stack of design, travel, and craft publications and a tall hot beverage!