I have made a lightbox!!!

A comment from many of guildmates at PCAGOE was that my photos were dark and it was hard to see many of my pieces.  I totally agreed but had no idea how to fix the problem.  I take all my photos in my dark basement studio. Linda from nkdesigns and Susan from BOLDstreet gave me some great suggestions on tweaking the camera settings and lighting techniques.  (THANKS GUYS!!!)  So I decided to make a lightbox with the help of all the great diy tutorials out there. 

 

 This is what I came up with and after a little practice, the pictures came out a million times better.  I highly recommend that anyone taking photos of any items to sell on etsy or ebay take the time to make a lightbox.  The two lights I bought were $6 each at Lowes and the box and tissue paper I already had.  The construction took all of a half hour.  Definitely worth the time and money for the results I'm getting.

My Studio

Just wanted to post some photos of my studio and work space for those of you interested.  It's cluttered but functional.

And this is me "hard at work".  It was a no-make-up, no-contacts day.  Forgive me.

And I will tell you, an old dresser is a crafter's dream.  I hated this dresser when I actually had to use it for clothes (sticky, shallow, narrow drawers) but now that it's packed with paper, paint, stamps, and tools, it's quite dear to me.

And finally a shot of some of the current projects.  Exciting stuff.  :)

Well, guys.  This is my first blog and I'm sure it will go down in history as the worst of first blogs.  lol

I've been working hard to find my niche, my place in the polymer clay world where I'm not copying anyone's designs or ideas.  I find that spending time looking at other people's work actually helps in the process.  It gets my brain moving in how I would put a spin on whatever it is I'm looking at - incorporating different color schemes, textures, and applications. 

These beads are my most recent photographed work.  Fairly mundane but a huge step in getting the results I was aiming for at the time.  The canes worked.  The sanding and buffing worked.  Now to move onto using the beads.  :)