Just a couple of new designs to share - wet felted beret and felt bead necklaces

I've been having a blast using my new light box to take photos. Here's a couple of my latest creations. I may have to retake the photo for the white beret and necklace set. It all a kind of blends together on the white background.

Building a homemade light box for my felted creations with a little PVC pipe, some cotton material, and help from one crafty dad!

A few months ago, one of my fellow local Etsy sellers, Nicole of Ni-Chern Designs, posted to our Kansas City Etsy Street Team forum about having a group light box build at her home. At the time I was unable to attend, but I really, really wanted to have my own light box to take photos. Nicole posted links to a couple of different tutorials for building a light box using PVC pipe as the shell or base. You can find the instructions here and here. Also, if you search the web for "home made light box", you will find many more tutorials out there. I suggest that you pick one that you like and can understand well, then go from there which is what I did.

Since I am not that savvy at building dimensions, I printed out a copy of some online light box tutorials and handed them over to my dad. The original light box size was much too small to fit my larger creations so my crafty dad did a little figuring to size the dimensions up for me. My light box ended up being approximately 40 inches wide X 32 inches high X 26 inches deep. Unfortunately, it makes my head spin a bit to think about adapting the original light box dimensions so you are on your own if you need to scale the PVC pipe up or down from the original plans. Hopefully, you or someone dear to you is savvy at building dimensions. My dad quickly finished building a much larger version of the basic PVC pipe shell as seen in the original plans. He left it unglued so that it could be taken apart and reassembled if necessary.

After the basic PVC pipe shell was built by my crafty dad, I took over with the finishing touches. First I placed the shell of the light box on an old kitchen table that I use in my basement studio and braced the legs to the table using a bit of sticky tac on their bottoms. (Since it was so large, it was going to have to be a stationary setup in by basement studio.) Then, I bought three yards of inexpensive white cotton material to cover for the top and two sides of the light box. I also purchased two yards of cotton material to use as the background which covers the back of the light box and drapes down on the table top. This material can be any color you want for your background. The lighting was obtained from a hardware store. They are simply three inexpensive workman's lamps with 100 watt bulbs placed in them. It is good to have lighting from at least three light sources to avoid shadows. You may need to adjust the angle and placement of your light sources as well as the wattage of the bulbs. This will all depend on your own light box location and setting.

As far as your photo results are concerned, you may still need to edit them slightly in a photo editing software like Photoshop. Even with my great new light box setup, I have found that I still have to tweak the photos a bit to get them just right, but I am a trained graphic designer and very picky at times about this kind of thing. You can see a examples of my latest light box photos in this post along with a photo of my actual light box. For more photos of the light box and example shots taken using it, please visit my flickr account. I hope this information is helpful to you in your crafty endeavors and photographing them!

My new mannequin form for taking photos of my handmade felted wool scarves

Up to this point, I've always photographed my hand felted wool scarves on a flat surface. Recently, I started thinking that it might be better if I were able to drape my scarves over a human form to show how they hang when worn. I debated for a long time on whether or not to buy some kind of mannequin form for this purpose. After researching my options and the wide array of prices for this kind of display item, I settled on buying two inexpensive plastic mannequin torsos that set on a table top surface. They are actually hollow in the back, but for my photo purposes, it really doesn't seem to matter.

Here's a couple of photos of the results. My photos are a bit bright, but this had nothing to do with the mannequin, but rather my photography skills, or should I say, my lack of photography skills. Anyway, I think that it is an improvement to see the scarves hanging on a human figure. Hopefully, it will allow potential customers to imagine what the scarf might look like on themselves . . . and buy a scarf or two.

Photo shoot day . . . taking pictures of my stuff

The surprising truth is that taking photos of my handmade creations is one of my least favorite things to do. I usually wait until I have a huge amount of items that I need to take pictures of before I go ahead with it. Then I just plan an all day photo shoot. I've really come to respect professional photographers' abilities because it is such an ordeal for me to try to take good pictures, and they aren't always that good either. I admit that I did have a photography class or two in college, but I think that I would definitely benefit from taking another one some time.

Here's a little synopsis of how I go about taking my product photos. I use a digital camera to take all of my photos, a Samsung Digimax. It is very easy to use and usually takes great photos on all occasions. You can see my little photo shoot area in the picture - not exactly the most impressive space, but it certainly works. I take photos in front of a large window in my office/studio space. The natural lighting is great there on days when the sun is shining brightly. I also use poster board, construction paper, or large sheets of colored foam for my backgrounds. I don't always put up poster board over the window as in the picture because it does block out a lot of natural lighting. The poster board is a nice solid background for when I photograph hats, scarves, and other large items. Sometimes I use a large spotlight on these items also.

When I'm finished taking photos, I usually still have to do some color correcting or light correcting to the digital files. Since I am also a trained graphic artist, I put those skills to use, but I try not to alter the product image or change the overall photo too much. I always want to accurately portray what I'm selling or showing to my audience.

I know that there are certainly better photography set ups out there, but mine is inexpensive and doesn't take up any extra space. I've read online several times how to make a light box and plan to do that some day. For now, what I've been doing seems to work for me most of the time. I do get the occasional bad photo that I have to redo all together because no amount of digital retouching could ever help it, but most of my photography turns out pretty well - at least in my opinion it does. I'm continually trying new angles and props just to see what works, and I'm sure that my photos will continue to improve over time.

You can see some of my latest photos on my flickr account. I just took some photos this week that I'll be uploading today.