What did we do before the Internet?

Today, thinking it might be my last snow day this week, I wanted to concentrate on trying to get some half way decent pictures. I read two reference books this morning, printed out two tutortials took 35 more pictures and tried to edit them to the best of my ability. Still not the pictures that I desired. This definitely is not the camera. I used my daughter's Cannon EOS Rebel XTI for the pictures. I then took a break and was reading some web pages from a bead artist by the name of Julie Nordine. She has a blog that had a post that shared some of her tips on bead photography. She shared where she got these tips and I read those sites also. Maggie and I both learned from this. We made the changes to the settings on the camera and I took more pictures made some more changes and took more pictures. I had to do very little in the software program to make the pictures absolutely sparkle. Now they accurately depict the beads, flaws and all. That really makes you pause. But that is really what is best if you are selling something on the internet. I want the buyer to actually see the item for what it is, HANDMADE.

These beads are not cranked out of a machine in china. They are hand crafted one by one in with a single torch on a mandrel and then put into a kiln, cleaned by me and inspected by me. The tips that Julie shared were not major changes but just enough to make the big difference. I am consistently amazed at the sharing of knowledge that occurs within this community of artists, they share freely, they teach each other, they exchange product when needed and treasure each others friendship. I have been involved in other artistic endeavors but never have I seen or experienced a group of people like this. It is wonderful.

The pictures above all have been posted prior to today on etsy, facebook or in this blog. I my opinion they are so much better than the first attempts. I got so excited that I didn't even miss not making beads tonight. It will make me a better artist just knowing that I can present a accurate depiction of my work for sale.

Snow Day #2

Today was a day to stay by the fire and work on my internet pages. My daughter and I both sat on the couch in front of fire and TV with afghans on our laps and our laptops on top of them. We both should have been doing other things but it felt good somehow to just watch the snow come down. Hopefully tomorrow will be a productive bead day. Maggie did do some studying for a certification test she has to take on Monday and I did accomplish some items that I needed to take care of on my Etsy shop page. The picture is of a button that I listed as my first item for sale on the internet about a month ago. It has not sold yet but I am new to all of the intracacies of selling on the internet. I made some adjustments to the page and my profile. Pricing is another whole ball game. Etsy suggested that I belong to a service that is called Stumble. Etsy stated in their info pages that it would increase the traffic to my site, I am not sure how that happens but the service is very interesting. You give them a list of interests and they load web pages that fit. Very interesting pages occurred. You then give them a thumbs up or down. Who knows maybe I will learn something new anyway.