Busy busy busy!

I suppose you could best describe this is a "look how I'm displaying what I've made for my Folksy and Etsy shops and tell me what you think, please" post!

It's said so often in the forums on both sites that when you can't see and handle a piece of jewellery the photographs and descriptions have to work super hard for you. That's why any of you who look regularly at either of my shops will have seen twentysix different photographs of most of my pieces - and still counting.....

And I'm also posting so that all you lovely people who are following my blog don't think I'm dead or something..... This last couple of weeks has seen a mighty push in terms of a) making jewellery, b) photographing it and c) starting the long process of photo editing and listing. Both on Folksy and on Etsy and all of course in addition to the day jobs. Phew!

I was very fortunate indeed in being able to do my photo shoot out of doors on Monday this week. (Oh boy was it hot, several tubes of Factor 30 later, lol!)

I'm pretty pleased with my current set up so I'll just give you a few examples of the results. The piece of driftwood is one that we used in dim ages past at craft fairs; Roger cleaned it and rubbed some gilt cream into it and varnished it. The shells are ones we've acquired over the years. The white lacy fabric in the background is a crochet shawl that was a present from a friend. And I'm using smoked glass over paper that I've drawn on for a base.

Any comments on the setup would be very welcome, thanks in advance, I'm aiming for continual improvement here, folks!
The piece of paper under the glass in this picture has a kind of abstracty blue and yellow sea and sand scrawl on it!










Yawwwwwn! It's 5.15 a.m. and I can't sleep, been awake since 3.30. (Just thought I'd throw that in, I'm not usually an insomniac, rather totally the opposite!) So I've got up to finsh this post.

Here's the driftwood in all its glory. The gilt cream and matt varnish pick out the texture really well, I think.

At craft fairs we used to drape several necklaces over this and they often sold before the ones on the display board.
And here's the "anatomically correct overview shot" (as opposed to the "come on in and look some more" shot) - can you see the linden leaves I've drawn for the background?

I think this one's a bit on the dark side, actually, I need to brighten it before I load it.






Since we only get three photograph slots on Folksy I have decided to stick to this formula - the first and second thumbnails will be the aforesaid "come on in and look some more" and "anatomically correct overview" and the third will be either the necklace on a dummy or earrings hanging from a glass or cup.
I haven't got the colours right on this one yet and I also need to Photoshop out the irritating label (since there's no way on this earth I can get it off!)










I picked out several different coloured mugs for displaying the earrings.

Quite a few of the earrings I shot on a couple of colours to see which looked best.







The only thing that still has me somewhat perplexed is displaying stud earrings and bracelets.

For studs I think I'm going to have to use our display stand (dense foam covered in velvet) and hope they hold in long enough for me to photograph them!

Bracelets are tricky, I've not cracked displaying them properly yet. I don't want to model them, as I know I wouldn't want to buy anything that's been modelled. I think I just need to go and buy a bracelet display form and photograph it in a similar way to the necklaces.

Well it's now 6.05 and the alarm will be going off in 25 minutes so there's no point in going back to bed - think I'll just go and make another cup of tea!!