Friday 14 December 2012

Santa's Coming!

Not long now is it?  It's slightly frightening as I'm not sure I've done everything yet - I certainly haven't put the cards into the post that I need to so that's a job for today and I've a couple of gifts to finish.

Other than that I'm still messing around with loading up pictures of things I want to sell through my website rather than through Etsy and I managed to get some more photos done this week.  I'm glad I grabbed the moment on a sunny afternoon as the remainder of this week has been very dark and dull thanks to the usual British winter skies.

I've got lots and lots of these Tibetan repousse pendants to add (amongst other things):


I've either been brave or foolish but I've got provisional bookings at some local craft fairs in 2013, with the first one in just over a months time - hopefully this will spur me into actually making something with my huge stock of stuff that I've been amassing/have collected and as it's be January I'm going to start making some slightly Spring like things....

And I'll let you know if this goes ahead but I recently applied to be a tester/writer for a craft blog - they've accepted me and I'm now just double checking that they realise that I'm in the UK as they'll need to send me things to use and review...

Just to finish up, on the dance front I have a little break now so need to set my thinking cap on about what I shall be offering my belly dance students in 2013.

Sunday 2 December 2012

Supplies and Stuff

So here and there I have bags and boxes and tins and bowls that have stuff in them.  Lots of stuff.  Getting around to digging it all out becomes over-whelming sometimes but I am determined to do it.  I might as well sell some of it instead of having it all hanging around taking up my head-space (and bits of house-space) because I find I feel swamped.  Not having a dedicated work-room is a definite difficulty at times but as the weather has taken a very cold turn I'm glad I'm not ferreted away up in the attic, freezing my bits off.

I have some cool frames that I've been wanting to use to...well, frame my makes and my supplies in the increasingly (I hope) interesting shots I've been playing with.  On Friday I was motivated enough to have a little play with the camera, even though the light wasn't brilliant.  In the end I got the best overall colour by taking pics by the window but with the curtain almost closed.  It filtered the harsh winter light brilliantly and I got some almost warm looking shots that won't need a huge amount of tweaking.


Teeny antique keys


The Art Deco buckle necklace - I want to retake pics of all of the assemblage items I currently have in the shop because their current coldness when I look at them makes me wince....


Buddha amulet - I have a few of these and I shall play with a couple and will sell the others.  These are a kind of two-in-one item to my mind - liberate the Buddha and use him in one piece and then use the box frame for a second item.....


Elytra beetle wings - I love these things, they have such an awesome blue green sheen and to start with I struggled to capture the intensity of them.  The light is so harsh in this house sometimes that it's hard to capture colours so I played around with closing the curtain and shazaam!


This one's a little cool so I shall I have to tweak this one before I post the listing.  But I have heaps of these sew-on stones and they're glass so they're really substantial.  I need to try and take some better shots of these because the light that bounces off of them is awesome and this pics is a little meh.....


Another shot of the keys but this time it's to showcase the beautiful Zeigfried Follies girl in the photo.  She's fabulous - I think I want to be her.


And a pouch necklace shot - as I say, I want to re-shoot all my assemblage jewellery pieces and luckily, with the shop being not as full as it could be this is a good time to do it.  I love the pieces I have and really want them to look their sumptuous best.

I've got lots more shots to sort out, a little warming up here and there, file sizes to decrease etc and then lots and lots more product to take pictures of and I'm going to aim to get it ll done before Christmas.  Hah, wish me luck!

But before I get started with that I'm going to sit down with a brew and have me a mooch around the Handmade Monday blog.