August Projects

It's been a busy couple of weeks since the last post but rest assured it has been frantic on the making front. I discovered a new passion, embroidery. I began by making it up and then watched a useful video on Etsy labs that showed four stitches and I was up and running.

Here are a few samples, I'm so excited to incorporate the technique into new plushies.

This was my first attempt sans instructions.

 

little trees

Owl Tea Towel

Sun and Cloud

Rain cloud with rainbow on back

In addition I've been making a selection of cloud pillows as well as a sun but it looks more like an egg when not placed near a cloud. I embroidered a rainbow on the back of the rain cloud but forgot to take a picture. That's it for now, short and sweet.

How to Photograph Greeting Cards Easily

There comes a time when you have to put down the pen or sewing needle and get down to the business of photographing your output. So armed with my new fancy Canon I set about getting it done as quickly as possible. I was going to do it outside but I decided any breeze would probably cause mayhem so into my very messy studio I went. One sweep of the arm to clear the table, one large sheet of white drawing paper and a bit of masking tape and my backdrop was set. Now the new camera is a lot heavier than my old (but very handy powershot D10) so I dusted off my tripod from college and set it up level with the display.

Using only natural light, I hate flash it just blasts details into oblivion I focused using the large screen viewfinder and shot a couple of images.

To save time I placed the circle ruler below so that my card would be placed in exactly the same spot. As I mentioned speed was key. I should add I removed the ruler after I placed the card in position.

And last but not least the finished shot. In order to get a perfect white background I had to take out the shadows and brighten the exposure a bit. The beauty is that because you take all the shots at the same time you can just batch change the whole lot in Photoshop relatively painlessly but even if you don't have it they can still look pretty good. All the images will eventually find their way online.