Taking Nice Photographs on a (Very) Tiny Budget

Shh, don't tell anyone I haven't post in a while! I have schoolwork and I'm a busy little bee. 

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That's a bumble bee :D

Anywho, today I decided I want to post about the way I personally photograph my items. I know there's a lot of tutorials out there, but they don't all work for everyone, so I thought I'd add mine to the mix. :) Hopefully at least a few people out there will find that this method works for them.

I'm poor. I refuse to go buy an expensive lightbox. So I scoured tutorials for photographing my pictures and tried a whole bunch of different techniques. I've tried laying my jewelry on rocks, on pretty cloth backgrounds, on boxes covered with white paper, on white vinyl out in the sun, and I've even tried making my own lightbox out of foamboard. I decided that I really like the look of the nice, clean white background with my jewelry. Some of my lightbox pictures came out very nicely, but a lot of other ones came out with awkward shadows on them, or didn't show the true color of the piece. I refused to post anything that didn't accurately describe my jewelry, fearing that buyers would receive something slightly different than in the photograph and would be unhappy with their purchase. The lightbox was also very big and bulky, which was a major drawback because I had very little room to store all my equipment.

I finally discovered that the perfect object for me to photograph on is a piece of foamboard. That's all. One  piece of foamboard.

I then used a yardstick to roughly plot out the middle of the foamboard widthwise and made a slice down the center, being careful not to cut the foamboard entirely in half.

Now it bends in half!

At home I have the lights that clamp onto something that I use to photograph with, but at school I have a lamp that I use.

And it folds in half for nice easy storage, so that there isn't MORE stuff around my room for my wonderful roommate to quietly seethe about. :D

Of course, for this to give you a perfect white background you must know how to adjust the white balance on your camera, and be able to edit your photos on the computer a little bit. I use iPhoto (I have a mac) and i adjust the levels so that the white looks whiter. :)

Hope this helps at least someone!

Oops! Forgot to Post!

Crap! I got busy over the weekend and forgot to post! Well here we go...

I watched the inauguration. It was so exciting! History has been made! I don't have that much to say about it, other than that. =P

I just got finished creating my first custom order for someone, and I'm having trouble posting it on etsy. I'm getting some kind of error that says 'Service Unavailable - Zero size object'. Bah. I made a custom pair of Fairy Wings Earrings. They look like

this.

I hope my customer is happy with them. 

I'm back at school now. My dorm room makes me feel sleepy and lazy. I'm trying to combat that by opening the windows and letting in the freezing air from outside, which I'm sure my roommate doesn't like very much. I try to be as respectful of her as I can because she puts up with a lot from me. I'm messy and kinda loud and she loves me anyway. Last semester I left out my box of finished jewelry and she tripped over it and sprained her ankle. She had to get an ankle brace and crutches. I felt really bad! Luckily we're still friends. <3 Yay!

Now, time to photograph some destash items!

Tagged By Dropofsunshinedesign

Drop of Sunshine Design tagged me to write 7 random things about me! So ok... 

1. I tuck my pants into my socks and my shirt into my pants when I go to bed at night because i can't stand waking up cold because I have skin exposed.
2. I want to visit England and Ireland someday soon (hopefully in Ireland I'll hear some fairy lore! ^_^)
3. I want to learn to sew, make a quilt, make lampwork beads, screenprint and lots of other things I can't think of right now!
4. I can't STAND being cold.
5. My favorite color is purple.
6. I can't wait to be a mom someday!
7. I bit my nails like crazy.

YAY! Full blog post Saturday :)

All I Made This Weekend...

All I made this weekend was... a mess. SIGH. I sat in my living room with my wire and my beads all spread out on the floor and everything I tried to make was a complete failure. Ah well. Yesterday was a completely wasted day. I had no motivation to do anything so I watched Zack and Miri Make a Porno online. It was really cute. Then I just sat around and window shopped on Etsy. =P

I'm going to be doing a destash in my shop of old supplies. I posted the first destash item up here. It's 5 pair of 22 gauge sterling silver earwires.

I have 50 pairs of these earrings that I bought a while back and never used because I bought the wrong style. I never returned them because it was just too much of a hassle, and I don't want them. I'll also be getting rid of a bunch of old beads that I got when I first started making jewelry and don't really fit my taste.

A New Year, A New Start

Okay, so it's a new year! 2009! This year, I'm going to try to actually UPDATE this blog, hehe! I tend to start things and forget about them, so this year I'm going to try to actually keep up with the things that I start for my business. I'm going to outline my methods of promotion,  my resolutions and my goals for this year in this post.

Online Promotion Methods

1. I've created a twitter account here to try to follow other etsians and crafters
   
2. I have a deviantART account here
3. Posting in the Etsy forums
4. This blog! :)

Resolutions

1. I will devote between an hour and an hour and a half everyday to online promotion

a. I will visit Etsy and post in the forums

b. I will check my twitter account

c. I will check blogs and post comments

d. I will check my deviantART account

2. I will create new pieces in my free time on Mondays and Wednesdays

3. I will blog about my recent activities on Mondays and Wednesdays

4. I will photograph, edit, and upload new pieces to Etsy on Tuesdays and Thursdays 

5. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays will be a for whatever I didn't do during the week.

Goals

1. Sell 5 things between now and February 14 (market jewelry as a unique valentines day gift for yourself or your significant other)
2. Do one local craft show (possibly the Renaissance Faire one in the summer?)
3. Sell 5 pieces each month
4. Have a jewelry show before May 31
5. Promote promote promote! Hand out business cards, leave flyers on community bulletin boards, anything you can think of!

Hopefully these goals are gonna help me get a little more exposure and success. I've never made a list this detailed before!

Anyway, onto other things!

I have so many listings that I need to put up on Etsy... I have so many items that need to be photographed and have descriptions written for them! I used to find that photographing was the most difficult thing for me, but I've really gotten that down thanks to many different internet tutorials, experimentation, Photoshop and my Mac's iPhoto program. :) Now I find the difficult part writing the descriptions for my jewelry! I want all my pieces to have a little bit of a story to them, and as I'm not a writer, it's hard for me to come up with something that I like enough to post. As a result, I have plenty of jewelry just sitting around and waiting for a story!

Here's an example of a story for something I haven't posted yet:

Whenever a rainbow appears in the sky, you can be sure it's the work of the Rainbow Fairies. They paint rainbows in the sky after storms and make sure the ends of the rainbow never touch the ground. :)

This is a little blurb of a story that I really like, but this bracelet isn't up yet because I don't have enough pictures of it! So I suppose I'm off to take pictures :)

Okay, so it's a new year! 2009! This year, I'm going to try to actually UPDATE this blog, hehe! I tend to start things and forget about them, so this year I'm going to try to actually keep up with the things that I start for my business. I'm going to outline my methods of promotion,  my resolutions and my goals for this year in this post.

Online Promotion Methods

1. I've created a twitter account here to try to follow other etsians and crafters
   
2. I have a deviantART account here
3. Posting in the Etsy forums
4. This blog! :)

Resolutions

1. I will devote between an hour and an hour and a half everyday to online promotion

a. I will visit Etsy and post in the forums

b. I will check my twitter account

c. I will check blogs and post comments

d. I will check my deviantART account

2. I will create new pieces in my free time on Mondays and Wednesdays

3. I will blog about my recent activities on Mondays and Wednesdays

4. I will photograph, edit, and upload new pieces to Etsy on Tuesdays and Thursdays 

5. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays will be a for whatever I didn't do during the week.

Goals

1. Sell 5 things between now and February 14 (market jewelry as a unique valentines day gift for yourself or your significant other)
2. Do one local craft show (possibly the Renaissance Faire one in the summer?)
3. Sell 5 pieces each month
4. Have a jewelry show before May 31
5. Promote promote promote! Hand out business cards, leave flyers on community bulletin boards, anything you can think of!

Hopefully these goals are gonna help me get a little more exposure and success. I've never made a list this detailed before!

Anyway, onto other things!

I have so many listings that I need to put up on Etsy... I have so many items that need to be photographed and have descriptions written for them! I used to find that photographing was the most difficult thing for me, but I've really gotten that down thanks to many different internet tutorials, experimentation, Photoshop and my Mac's iPhoto program. :) Now I find the difficult part writing the descriptions for my jewelry! I want all my pieces to have a little bit of a story to them, and as I'm not a writer, it's hard for me to come up with something that I like enough to post. As a result, I have plenty of jewelry just sitting around and waiting for a story!

Here's an example of a story for something I haven't posted yet:

Whenever a rainbow appears in the sky, you can be sure it's the work of the Rainbow Fairies. They paint rainbows in the sky after storms and make sure the ends of the rainbow never touch the ground. :)

This is a little blurb of a story that I really like, but this bracelet isn't up yet because I don't have enough pictures of it! So I suppose I'm off to take pictures :)

Decisions, decisions... 

After much deliberation (well, not really that much, just a day) I've decided that to boost my inventory for the craft show I will be making more than one of most of my pieces. For the last year and a half I've only made one-of-a-kind pieces, but I really don't charge that much so no one really appreciates the fact that everything is one-of-a-kind. And it's not like I'm well known, either. I figure that since I need a bunch of stuff for November, and it's really difficult coming up with an endless supply of new designs, so I really have no other option. I've gotta say, it feels really weird to me, seeing six of the exact same earring. It feels like I'm cheating... =S

This is a ring I made a few months ago. I really really really like it... It's got the king of feel that I want all of my jewelry to have. It's fun, whimsical, and ethereal! The only problem is that since I used colored wire, Some of it got peeled off by the pliers when I was making it...

You can pretty clearly see the damage in this picture. It makes me sad. :( I love this ring to death, and I'm afraid for my life to try and make it again because I don't think I'll be able to... I don't have any other buttons like this so I'd have to tear this ring apart if I wanted to make it again...

So that's my dilemma.