Renegade Handmade!

That's right - the Renegade Handmade shop in Chicago is now carrying Freshie & Zero! Woo hoo! It's a really cute little shop on W Division Street that carries cool handmade items from vendors from all over the country (and world!). Vendors such as... Super Maggie, Biggs & Featherbelle, My Paper Crane, and fellow Middle Tennessean - Fondue Art & Design among many talented others!

The store was created as an extension of the Renegade Craft Fair, an event founded in 2003 that I was lucky enough to participate in this past September right in Chicago. It is still my #1 show that I have ever done! For more info about the fairs, click here!

Stuff

So, one of my nearest and dearest friends who I've been been playing phone tag with for months finally caught me on the phone! It was just like high school all over again - we talked like we had just seen each other yesterday and talked, and talked... for an hour and twenty minutes! That's probably the longest conversation I've had all year! It was so fun to catch up, but weird that our conversations have shifted from boys and homework to savings accounts and marital housekeeping duties.

Second, there was a LOT of lightning tonight in Nashville and it was scary because it was very frequent and very close to my front door. I happened to watch the news tonight and saw that a fire (not confirmed that it was lightning that started it) heavily damaged the Werthan Mills Lofts - the same ones where my wedding photographer has a studio! Yikes! My first thought was "oh no, all of Chuck's pictures" then I thought "he better have mine backed up!" Fortunately, the fire only affected one of the buildings that no one happened to be living in yet since it was still being finished. Fires are scary. It reminded me of the fire we had in my condo complex last year (one of the buildings next to mine had a massive fire and I watched in disbelief as the flames ate up people's homes). Maybe it's time to buy a backup hard drive for my Freshie & Zero files and store it elsewhere...

the view from our booth

Also, I went to a great craft show this weekend in Alabama - it was the Moss Rock Festival and it was so well organized, planned, and full of things to look at and buy! I was so impressed, and it was also successful sales wise, which is always nice. I met a talented ceramicist named Amy (her line is Olaria) that I traded necklaces with and bought one of her platters for a Christmas gift.

a necklace by Olaria from Birmingham, Al

I also saw an artist making wooden jewelry and wooden "art" which I thought was really pretty until I recognized a piece of scrapbook paper from Michael's being sold as an art piece! All I could think of was "Lame!!!" Granted, she had embellished it a little, and I heard her say something about sanding and varnishing, but it really was just a sheet of scrapbook paper glued onto a piece of wood and sold as art. Wow.

Featured on the Austinist

Check out my interview in the Austinist! Since I'm not a local, what I can gather is that the Austinist is a frequently updated blog/news source about happenings in Austin, TX. They're doing profiles of various Stitch artists and luckily for me, Jennifer Perkins of Naughty Secretary Club sent them my way. Some nice person even commented already on how much they love my jewelry - awesome!

To see more Stitch previews and reviews from the Austinist, visit their Stitch section. You can also visit the Austin Craft Mafia to learn all about the ladies behind Stitch.

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!

Click To Play

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...