Photographing jewelry with Gemmafactrix of etsy.com

This is a great video posted by etsy about photographing jewelry. In it, Brooke Medlin of Gemmafactrix shares her secrets of taking great jewelry shots with the world - I definitely followed some of her advice for my own jewelry pictures! Quoting from their video post: "Brooke Medlin visited us at the Etsy Labs in March 2007. She taught classes on jewelry making and photography. Based in Ohio, Brooke also ran her Etsy shop Gemmafactrix.etsy.com out of our Brooklyn homebase for two weeks."

So, if you've ever wondered how to take quality photos of small items (such as jewelry), you should really take a moment to watch this video - it's well worth your time!

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The girl is good - she's sold over 2600 items on etsy!! AND she has 100% positive feedback. That's pretty darn impressive. Here's a great example of one of her beautiful photos below. She really makes me want to get a better camera, or at least one I understand how to use properly...

I personally take photos with natural light like she does - I set up my jewelry shots right next to a window in my apartment but unfortunately this means you can only shoot them in the daytime when it is sunny out. I recently bought a light box but it just did not give me enough light to really pick up all of the little details of my jewelry. When it gets warmer out, I may try and take the light box outside and see if diffusing the natural light works better than trying to use the little lights that it came with...

New Discoveries

I just discovered how to take screen snapshots on my Mac by downloading their handy tip of the day podcasts, and then I discovered that I can post a wish list in my blogger profile!! Wow!

So... if you ever wondered what to buy me for my birthday, Christmas, Columbus Day, Labor Day, etc... here's a link to my etsy wish list complete with a screen shot:

Back from the Girlie Show!

The adventures of freshie & zero take us to The Girlie Show 2007 in Oklahoma City! Ten hours there and ten hours back... another long journey for Freshie & Zero, or should I say, Beth & Greggars? We listened to some David Sedaris, tried to listen to Stephen Colbert's new book on CD (put us both to sleep unfortunately), and learned that although Arkansas has bad roads, Oklahoma has worse ones. Fortunately, the gals at the Girlie Show know how to throw a rockin' craft show. It was held here at a neat old building formerly known as the Farmer's Market where they also apparently host boxing matches:

There was a line out the door starting at 5:30, and the show didn't open until 8:00! The decorations were really cute and girlie, of course, which I loved. The layout of the show was great, and it was pretty packed all night. I was a little afraid that the merry customers (a.k.a. wasted) were going to knock my tables over or spill a cocktail since they were setting their drinks down on top of my necklaces (that's a first!), but we got through the night without any mishaps.

we're safe behind the tables!

On Saturday, we listened to great music - if the Oh Johnny! Girls ever come to your town, I highly recommend going to see them! I even bought a special present for a special friend, but I must not reveal it until Christmas... mwa ha ha... We also ate at a yummy restaurant called Cafe Nova because when on the road, it's important to investigate the local cuisine... All in all it was a great show and I'm glad we were included!

Ah, the glamour of craft shows...

So we're back from the Germantown Festival and it was hot hot hot and then wet hot wet. The best part about doing this show was that I got to try out my new tablecloths, made by Beth Howard and they look awesome! The saddest part was watching mud get splattered on them when the rain was dripping heavily off of our tent. :( (but they're all clean now)

The first day, it rained early in the morning, so when the sun came out it was muggy and sticky, quite like a sauna. Of course there was the usual crafter grumbling that they were having bad days, but my day was fine. This is one of the very few shows I have done for two years in a row, and it was nice when customers would run up to the booth, super excited that they found me, and telling me they were so happy I came back! That certainly is good for morale when my body feels a bit wilted.

Then.... it rained. But really, it only poured through the night and mostly in the morning of day 2 when we were setting up. I was feeling pretty low since my tent has a little leakage problem and it kept dripping on us as we were trying to dry the cases and put out the jewelry. But, it was mostly disappointing because soooo many crafters had packed up and left! They gave up on six hours of selling because of a little rain! And poo poo on them because the rain let up right as the show started and we had another successful day.

The view from our tent day 1:

Notice there are several booths, including my neighbor who was selling "spirit hair". Yes, you read that right - colored human hair that you can put in your own to match your school or favorite sports team. And that's all I have to say about that.

The same view day 2:

The rain scared off a lot of vendors around me: spirit hair girls were gone, a potter from Oklahoma, a guy selling pet i.d. tags and pet hats (which was really odd since Sunday is this big dachshund race, "the running of the weenies", that brings out tons of little dogs whose owners would buy little hats for them. I was really surprised that so many people left, and that the festival officials didn't try and stop them or threaten them (like saying they wouldn't be allowed back next year - a threat that is rarely followed up on anyway).

Here comes the big scary cloud, but we're still in the sunshine. This big nasty cumulonimbus (ooh! big vocab word!) passed us over for the most part at the end of the first day.

A little puddle was all that remained of the nasty overnight storm. Since Tennessee is in a drought, the ground just sucked up all the water.

If you want to see all of the photos from the Germantown Festival, you may view my set at Flicker here.