My Creative Space

My Creative Space this week is sort of a pre-creative space. Running low on great antique buttons for jewerly, I have been spending the week going through my personal collection to take buttons I really don't need. I guess that is a sign that I should acquire some new buttons for my work collection!

I keep the pictoral buttons separated according to the National Button Society classification guide. I keep 4 major collections: plant life, animal life, pictoral objects and misc. pictorial. Above is a few cards from my personal plant life collection. Showing is a card of various identified flowers and a card of pansies (one of my favorites!). I should actually share some of my buttons with you on the blog...great idea for weekend posts!

You can see a larger image by clicking on it!

Happy Thursday :)

Wordless Wednesday

From the Niagara Falls series.

Tip Tuesday - Photographing Jewelry - Final Part: Photo Editing Software

This is the final installment of my photographing jewelry series. The focus of this installment is on the importance of photo editing software.


Whether you are photographing jewelry or landscapes, your photos are only as good as your photo software. For amazing photos, you will need much more than the free software that either came with your computer or you can get free on the Internet. Free software allows you to do little more than crop, adjust levels a little and cover red eye. Premium software allows you to do much more.

There are several on the market you can purchase for various prices. Adobe PhotoShop is the best, in my opinion, but can be very costly (about $700) and take a lot of time to learn. A less expensive alternative is Corel PaintShop Pro, which is much more affordable (less than $100) and can handle basic photo editing tasks and then some. It does take some time to learn the program, but I'm sure it is not half as long as Adobe. I personally use Corel at the present time, although Adobe is definitely on my wish list! There is many more out on the market and I am not getting paid to plug these brands, I am only using these two as a matter of example.

To show you the key components of a photo editing software you are going to want to look for, I will take you through a basic photo editing session with my copy of Corel PaintShop Pro.

When photographing your piece, it is essential that you take several images of the same "pose" using different f-stops or other manual settings your camera will allow you to do. Some cameras have what they call 'program' which shows on the visible meter as -0.3, -0.7, 0, 0.3, 0.7, 1.0, etc. The following sample shows the different settings I used for the photo we are going to be fixing. Notice how each sample gets darker and darker.

I ended up choosing the first one in the series as, in my opinion, it is easier to work with lighter photos than darker photos. It seems that it is easier to go darker and clarify that it is to brighten up a dark photo.

We will be taking this photo and seeing what we can do to tweak things up a little and I will be listing them is steps as I go along:

1) Crop
The first thing you want to do is to crop the photo. Etsy prefers squared images, so I cropped the photo to 1728 x 1728 pixels. By the way, I always work in pixels, not inches. It might be easier for you to get into the habit of that.

2) Color Balance / White Balance
The next thing you want to do is to even out your color balance. Remember a few postings ago I mentioned something about your Smart White Balance on your camera? Very important to use it if you have it. My camera does have it, but it doesn't work very well, so I have to manually fix that issue in my photo editing software. In the sample below, there is just too much blue in the first original untouched but cropped picture. The sample next to it shows how I added a little bit more warmth to the picture to even out the blues. Notice how the dimensions change after that fix.

3) Levels
The left sample is the corrected color balance sample, but it needs a little more clarification and depth as it just looks too washed out. To correct this, I used my levels setting found in 'brightness/contrast'. Corel allows you to either let the program figure out the right levels or use the sliders to create your own level fix. The sample to the right shows how the program chose the usable levels for me. I could have tweaked the light, medium and dark sliders to fine-tune it more, but for this purpose, I thought the suggested level fix was plenty. The earrings to the right appear to pop out more from the background, whereas the image on the left appears more flat.

4) Sharpness
The final routine function you are going to want to do is to fiddle with the sharpness unmask. This function doesn't really mess with the sharpness of the image as much as it adds luminance to key areas of the photo. It is a real saver if you do not have a specific light to add twinkle to your pieces. I know you really can't tell in the photo below...if they were bigger, you would see a real difference. The image on the left shows the earrings before sharpness unmask was applied, whereas the one on the right shows after. The appear more real and more dimensional...like you want to reach out and grab it from your monitor. Most free software programs do not have this function and I believe it is a very important one.

This is not an exhaustive list as there are other key things you can do, like tweaking the hues of the photo or fixing faded colors, removing things from the photo you don't want there. How many times have you photographed a piece to find that your best photo had a piece of lint that shows up! Premium photo software allows you to remove the piece without altering what is behind the lint.

As you can see, we took the first photo in the series as seen on the left and turned it into the much better photo on the right. Again, this fix was accomplished just using basic functions so you can image that there is so much more you can do to fix your photos.

If you are going to make the investment and have the resources available to you, I recommend you get Adobe. If you are on a tight budget (as am I), Corel will get the job done until you can afford Adobe. Start sticking those pennies away! The most important thing is that you spend time with the manual and really learn what your software can do. There are tons and tons of tutorials online for both Adobe and Corel products, so there is no excuse outside of lack of time, and in that case, schedule little learning sessions for yourself throughout the week. Your premium photo editing software is not going to serve you well if you don't know how to use it!

Thank you so much for your patience with this series and I hope you learned something!

Monday MoodBoard and EC Advertisers

It's all grey and rainy today...

1) Greek Dress by Flower Sun - $109

2) Ash and Smoke Vintage Filigree Ring from laralewis - $16

3) Botanical Evening Keep Bag by KeepBags - $45

4) Black Gladiator Leather Sandals by Sandali - $55

A Shout Out and Thank You to last week's advertisers :)

Sunday - Fashion
Lenox Knits

Monday - Fashion
Anna's Adornments

Tuesday - Art
Still On The Verge

Wednesday - Fashion
Syd's Collection

Thursday - Mixed Bag
Ruth's Creations

Friday - Women's Interests
Scarborough Seashells

Saturday - Pets
Fresh 'n' Marine Aquarium

The Beauty of Spring - May Flowers Vintage Button Charm Bracelet

Artbeads .com enlisted their partner designers to interpret "The Beauty of Spring" in a jewelry design. Immediately after I learned of the challenge, charming visions of pink, purples, blues and yellows with a little twisted wire danced in my head. Oh, and of course, you knew I had to throw in a few vintage painted glass collectible buttons in the mix!

Miyuki Delica seed beads in Peachy Coral, Turquoise Green and Light Lilac were used to create the vintage button bead woven charms as well as the bead woven beads. Every bead weaver knows that Miyuki Delica beads are the beads of choice for techniques such as peyote as the sizes are very uniform which makes your rows line up perfectly every time. However, Miyuki Delica's prove to be perfect for other bead weaving techniques. The large holes accommodate for many more passes of the needle than other seed beads, which can only accommodate several. If too many passes are made, the bead breaks forcing the designer to start the piece all over.

After creating the beaded components, I used pressed Czech bell flower glass beads to create the remaining dangles. They were hand wired with 22 gauge artistic wire in rose and random beads. The chain of the bracelet was hand wired using 18 gauge artistic wire in rose, also. I was dying to try this wire as a lot of craft and jewelry wires prove to be too soft to hold up to the demands of a bracelet. I was quite pleased to find the 18 gauge wire to be sufficiently hard enough to make jump rings and a hook clasp without fear of the wire stretching and thus leading to the components to fall apart. The 22 gauge wire seemed a little softer than other 22 gauge wire brands, however, the wire worked well for the purpose of charm components. I would be afraid of the wire bending out of shape in using for ear wires or other components that need a stiffer wire to hold it's shape, but the 18 gauge was surprisingly stiff enough to ensure to me the shape will hold. The color quality of both the wires really impressed me. With many colored wires, the color scratches off when using hand tools. In both cases, the color did not scratch off at all. The package states that the wire is silver coated; perhaps this is the secret to good color quality. I plan on using this wire much more in the future as it turns out the wire was my favorite material out of all those used in the creation of this piece.


One final part that deserves mention is the vintage glass leaf brass head pins. I absolutely love working with vintage beads and components. They have that old-fashioned flair that is so hard to reproduce. Upon doing a search for "vintage" on the Artbeads.com website, the search turned up a whole slew of vintage beads and components. Since my piece was tied around spring and I knew flowers were going to be involved, I simply had to incorporate some of the vintage head pins into the design. I was impressed with the quality of the head pins. The wire was a little thin, maybe 26 gauge, but the wire was certainly brass and parts of the wire had a great patina. They were great to work with and as you can see, added the perfect icing on the cake.

I have offered this piece to the public and it can be found in my Etsy shop, Alterity Button Jewelry and Gifts. What a great addition to your spring ensembles! And you will love the jangle of the whole charm concept, too!

I also want to mention that Artbeads.com is currently offering a Tax Relief Sale, where the more you buy, the better your savings! Be sure to stop by the website and check it out!



Disclosure: Artbeads kindly provided, free-of-charge, the materials reviewed above within the frames of Artbeads.com Design Partner blogging program. The review of the materials in this article is based on my own honest, personal opinion of working with them. I, the author, have received no payment from Artbeads.com for this review.

To Write Love On Her Arms

I am skipping Wordless Wednesday to show you something that means a lot to my daughter. Tayelor joined a group on FaceBook "To Write Love On Her Arms". Teens are encouraged to write 'love' on their arms today to increase awareness of self-harm, teen depression and suicide. My daughter came downstairs all ready for track this morning (they have off this week for spring break) saying, "Mom, you're probably going to get mad, but...." and shows me her arms. After she explained what it is for, how could I get mad?

So, yes, I let her go out of the house with 'love' repeatedly written all over her arm.


Which reminds me, if this is a topic of interest to you, check out this blog. I try to hit it every so often and am always dragging my daughter to the computer to check it out. It has great resources for parents and teens alike. I promise you, it will be well worth your while!


For more information about To Write Love on Her Arms, visit the website!

Thank you for taking the time to read this post.

Tip Tuesday: Photographing Jewelry Part 4 - Angles

We are almost done with the series and I hope I have passed on some great info for you.

Today's post will be about composition and angles. First, let me apologize for the poor quality photos...the sun has not been cooperating with me and I just can't bring myself to lug out the photo tent! However, I refuse to complain because my gardens have been absolutely loving the rain!

When you are trying to sell your products online, you are hit with the problem that people cannot touch your pieces. Therefore, you have to make them enticing to the public. One way to achieve that is through interesting angles. Toss away all your ideas that you are not creative enough. If you created the piece, you are definitely creative enough and just have to tap into your creative photography skills.

We have all seen these photos:
Dead straight ahead...


Eagle eye views....

all of which do not make your piece look very interesting. If you shift the angle of photo 1, look what happens:

Pointing the camera dead straight ahead into the piece....

but lift the angle up a little bit so parts of the back of the piece are clearly visible....

Same shot...different angle. See the difference? And, with the right camera setting, you can capture an awesome depth of field. I hope you are really reading your manuals!

Now, take that same shot above and cock the angle to the right a little bit....

Much more interesting, huh? Now, going back to the first shot and comparing with the final one. Which one are you more likely to click on when doing a search. I know, the quality is poor, but if the quality was better, I would definitely be more interested in the second image. The thing is that it is the same shot, but 2 angle shifts.
Clean up the composition in the background and it would make a great photo!

Here is another demonstration with another shot. Showing the bracelet long-ways, here is a dead on shot.

Shift the angle to the right a little bit and look at the difference.

One more demonstration. This one pulls you in closer to show details in the piece (if they would have showed in this photo, I would have it made). But either way, taking a slice of an item is definitely more artistic than showing it all. You have heard the old saying, "Leave something for the imagination". Apply that principle here and use it for your "I got you to click" picture. It will serve you as the photo that pulls them in.

This angle is dead on but lifted up in the back a little bit, like first demonstration 2. Interesting angle, a little bit going on in the background, but not so much as to distract.

Now, cock the camera to the left this time and it looks so much more interesting than the one above.

So, I think my key concept here is to think creatively. Think angles. Scour Etsy to see what other angles people are using. Practice with your own angles and see what you come up with!

Next week will be the final installment in the series: Photo editing software. A must!

Monday Moodboard...EC Friends!

Mermaid Original Painting by CampbellJane
Visit her blog!

Fabric Bowl - Under the Sea by zizzybob
Visit her blog!

Mountain Mist Fused Glass Plate by LuckyGirlTrading
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"Thank You Advertisers" Sunday!

Thank you, last week's advertisers!!!

Be sure to visit these blogs...you won't be disappointed!

Tunisian Crochet

click pic to find on Amazon.com

I was tickled to see so many commenter's interested in Tunisian Crochet. I did not learn this from a website, however, if you Google it, you might find something worth looking at.

I learned from the book, Tunisian Crochet: The art of Knitting with the ease of Crochet by Sharon Hernes Silverman. Mind you, I didn't pay full price for it. Why should I when there are 50% off coupons floating around!

I seriously recommend this book if you want to learn to knit but can't for whatever reason. I didn't buy the book for the patterns, I bought it so I could learn the stitches and must say I am so glad I did. I will probably never use the patterns in the book. I'm more of a take-the-technique-and-design-my-own-stuff kinda girl!

I think some commenter's misunderstood why I cannot knit. I have what is called (are you ready?) Task Specific Severe Focal Hand Dystonia. I know, what a mouth-full! Basically what is going on is the area of my brain that controls motor function sends signals to my hands and forearm muscles to uncontrollably spasm while I am doing certain things (hence, task specific). You don't see the muscles spasming, I don't feel them spasming, I only feel pain for a few minutes and then the muscles lock up and don't move. I am choosing not to undergo treatment for the condition. When you read them, you will understand why!

Treatments:
1) One treatment is Botox injections into the muscles every 3 months, but the dystonia is so severe, I would need large quantities of Botox which would take 2-3 hours to inject and would greatly increase contracting botulism in my brain. Not an option.

2) Another treatment would be to have a pacemaker surgically implanted in my brain to stop the spasm signals. Okay, brain surgery is not an option for me unless it is to save my life.

3) The final treatment is narcotic muscle relaxers. Okay.....no!

So, I either don't do the things that aggravate the dystonia or learned to do things a different way or for shorter periods of time.

So far, the only things that aggravate it is:
- knitting
- writing
- holding a book while reading
- holding the phone
- driving for long periods of time
- hand sewing
- stringing beads by hand
- bowling....bowling of all things!
- long photography sessions

This will never become more severe than it is nor will spread to different areas, thankfully, but I am learning all the time things that I can no longer do, especially if I haven't done them in a long time. The good news is that you know me...I refuse to let anything get in my way of doing what I want to do. I will find a way to make lemonaide with any lemons that fall into my lap!!!

BTW...I did not get paid for this review. I am simply sharing this book with those interested in Tunisian crochet!

My Creative Space

I'm embarrassed to say that last weeks beading project is still on the bead board. That's the problem with working out new designs: just when you think you figured it out, you find another improvement and have to start all over!

So, I'll take you to my evening projects: Tunisian Crochet. Since my severe focal hand dystonia prevents me from knitting, Tunisian crochet is basically knitting on a crochet hook. It is believed that Tunisian crochet originates in either North Africa or the Near East. I started learning this technique a month and a half ago and the blue sample in the picture is the first "Perfect" sample I have created yet. It is a real difficult stitch to learn, but when you get it, it's worth the time it takes for the learning process!

This particular stitch literally resembles knitting, from the "v" shaped stitches in the front to the "perl" in the back. I am so glad I can knit now without hurting my hands!

For more "My Creative Space" or to play along, visit Kootoyoo's blog!

Wordless Wednesday

For tons more Wordless Wednesday, go Here!

Tip Tuesday....Photographing Jewelry Part III

Before we get started with this week's installment of Tip Tuesday, I want to shout out a couple things:
Paige from Lenox Knits has a fabulous giveaway going on right now:

9 Artisans are giving away stuff in her Spring Celebration Giveaway!

I just happen to be one of them :)
Paige did a wonderful interview on me that you can read here!

To enter the giveaway, click on her banner above. You have until April 25 to enter, so you better hurry!

Secondly, Mama Asid won some earrings from my Easter Treasure Hunt last year. Well, guess what I forgot to do....post pictures so that she could see what she won!!!! She won a pair of antique pearl button earrings wired with burgundy Swarovski crystals. Simple. Elegant. Gorgeous!

Okay...on to the show:

In the first installment, we covered the importance of proper lighting as well as how natural light works better. In the second installment, we covered backgrounds and props. If you missed either of them, I encourage you to visit the posts!

This week will be real quick: Camera functions. By now, most everyone has a digital camera and cameras with more manual functions are becoming cheaper and cheaper to own. I can't stress the importance of having cameras with the following features:

1) Macro setting:
The macro setting allows you to capture very small things with incredible sharpness and clarity that you cannot get with regular settings. Be sure you read your manual carefully so you can learn how to use this great setting.

2) Smart White Balance:
Most cameras have this setting. Mine camera has this but it doesn't work very well, so I have to rely on it with my photo editing software. Again, be sure to read up in your manual so you are using this setting if your camera comes so equipped with it.

3) Exposure Compensation:
If your camera has manual settings, learn how to use them. This is the setting where you have absolute control over how much light enters your camera. You will see next week how to use this feature as far as photography goes, but I encourage you to become very familiar with this setting before hand. Most cameras let you mess with either the shutter or aperature only. I don't usually do this because I find I have way more control with the total manual setting.

4) Lighting:
If your camera gives you the choice to toggle lighting sources (daylight, florescent, tungsten), be sure you set this appropriately based upon the light source. If you are using daylight, you want the setting to be daylight. Some cameras come with an "automatic" setting. Mine does, and I simply do not use it as it is not very accurate.

To wrap this week up...dig out our manual (or hunt it down online) and be sure you fully understand the functions of your camera. It will take some time to play with and understand them, so spend the next week doing so.

Monday Moodboard

The Cutest Pincushions!

Green and White Floral Pumpkin by SeaPink

Linen Pincushion Crochet Motif by namolio

Felt Cup Of Coffee by dottyral

Rage the Pincushion by Jefita

Now, you know, every sewing room need a Rage the Pincushion for those times when your sewing machine just is not behaving good!

Borrowing the idea from my friend over at Anna's Adornments, I would love to thank those of you who purchased an ad from me last week! Be sure to drop by them and say Hello! (click the pic to visit!)

Also, please visit this sweet little treasury in which one of my button bracelets is featured! You can also comment if you feel so inclined :)

Have a Beautiful Sunday!!!