5 basic rules for taking product photos... and more!

Last month I took part in a shop critique on Etsy and the one point that all participants agreed on was that some of my photos need improving.

This wasn't a big shock to me as I know that my photos aren't the best out there... although not as bad as some ;-)

Here are the basics rules:

1. Don't use your flash - EVER!
2. Take photos on a cloudy day (as opposed to a bright sunny day) and take them outside if possible.
3. Take photos of your products on a plain (preferably white) backgroud
4. Use the 'manual focus' button on your camera to get good close-ups
5. Don't take photos with the lights on - use natural daylight

And lastly....
Don't use your flash! (Important enough to mentioned twice!)

However, even when following these pieces of advice, there are still some tweeks that you can do on the computer to help enhance the photo (this isn't cheating - it's just making the most of your photo)

I'm very new to this digital editing of photos, so I had a play around and I'm happier with the results (although I think I still have a way to go and a proper white backgroud would definitley have helped)

First of all I played about with the exposure of the image, taking a photo from this:

to this:

And then I change the contrast, so it looked like this:

At this point it looked a little washed out and I was wondering if I shouldn't have changed the contrast, but it did make the next stage look better, when I started changing the colour saturation:

And then finally the temperature gets a little tweek:



This image above was actually shot on a pale greeny/blue window sill inside on an overcast day, but the editing has still helped the end result.

As a lot of my orders are custom made pieces there won't be an overnight change to all my shop photos, but over time, now that I know I need to spend a bit more time working on them, hopefully they will continue to improve!

PS. I made these edits using the Google+ editing tool on Chrome - have a look at some other photos that I've edited on my Google+ page

Being Featured!

Well, having said in my last post that I was over the horrid flu bug I'd caught off my daughter, it came back with a venegence and I've spent most of the last week in bed! However I have found the time to make a lovely friend of mine a 40th Birthday present... she let slip a while ago that her favourite flowers were tulips, so I thought a bunch would go down well that could stay out all year round without wilting:

I've also managed to finish off 3 Easter Bunny Rabit bags, 2 for my kids, Seren & Patrick and one for a friend's little boy who will be staying with us over the Easter weekend.... I will take some pics of the kids as they are doing their Easter Egg hunt and of all their spoils in the bags at the end - I expect it to be a true choco-holic's dream!

Now onto the other exciting news - I've been featured on a couple of different blogs, which is really exciting for me as it's still a novelty!! The first is Heart Handmade which has a lovely mini interview and some pics and the second is the fantastic Cuteable which has featured my cuddly owl cushion and also my Easter Finger Puppets

So despite the bug that's still lurking and forcing me to return to bed at regular intervals (and interrupting most of my craft time!) I'm really quite a happy bunny :-)

Have a lovely Easter weekend xxx

Monsters in the Workshop!

Well, after thinking that I was all set for my workshop and that I couldn't be any more prepared after doing so much last week, I was totally thrown today by two of my students (both 11 year olds) asking to make monsters! I had to think on my feet with this request and luckily both were brimming with immagination, as you can see:

Pretty scary looking beasts!

Thankfully, so that I don't have nightmares for the next week, my other two students (both adults!) wanted to make slightly prettier things:

The flower is going to be an embellishment for a bag and the owl on purple background will be a bag, but the lady making it has arthritis so couldn't go as fast as she'd have liked!

All in all though a very satisfactory session and a nice way to end the run - this was the 6th one I've done this term and I'm taking a break now till May as we've got almost all our weekends jam packed with friends coming to stay, going away ourselves, a play to perform, a hen weekend and a wedding! Phew, now I think about it, I might need a stint at an eastern meditation retreat to get over all of that!

Workshops & Elephant in Progress

After a nice positive set of comments about my first blog post (and fortified by a large glass of wine!) I thought I'd offer another. This week has been all about workshops & an elephant in progress.

The workshop I actually only ran today, but I've spent most of the week preparing for it. Given that my first series of workshops were billed as being 'felting classes' when they were actually sewing with felt, I had a mixed reception (although all of it very polite!) So this time round I asked Babs from Zigzags (in Coleford, where the classes are run) to make it quite clear that these classes were for those fairly new to sewing or children as it's more about the sewing, than the felt, the felt just happens to be the medium we're working in. I realised if I had more young people or those very new to sewing in the class, I'd need to be really organised and prepared, so all week I've been making a range of templates, photocopying and making lists of required materials for each item. Phew.

So today the class ran, and I'm glad I was so prepared... although it wasn't that busy, the participants were all in need of quite a lot of attention, so it wouldn't have been easy otherwise!

One thing they were quite keen to see was the elephant that I've been working on this week:

I'm not quite sure what to do with this little guy... he could be another brooch, but I sort of like the idea of turning him into some wall art (maybe framed) this could just be because I am additcted to elephants (espcialy Indian ones, like this chap!) and have a LOT of them framed on my walls. Given that I'm at a drama rehearsal tonight (I'm part of the local Am-Dram group) I've still got a bit of time to make my mind up.

I've got a few things that I've been asked to create by a couple of my lovely customers... an owl cushion is first up so I'm going to have fun designing that today in my lunch break (at the day job!) and then we're moving onto a Miffy inspired rabbit, so watch this space later in the week for photos. Have a good Monday everyone xxx

PS. The owls (from my previous post) are now available in my Etsy shop

Owl Brooches - a cute gift for Mother's Day

Hello? Is there anybody there?

Okay, well I'll assume there's hundreds of avid readers already (hey, a girl can dream, right?) and plough on! So for those of you who know me you'll know that Grace's Favours started last August (2011) and whilst it has not quite gone viral in that time (we've ascertained that I'm prone to the odd daydream already!), it's not doing badly at all and I thought a blog would be a nice addition.

So for my first post I thought I'd tell you about these owl brooches, which are a new line for the shop, just created this week and about to go up onto the etsy shop www.etsy.com/shop/gracesfavours and I think they would make a fab Mother's Day gift, which is of course just round the corner here in the UK (18th March)

What do you think of these little fellas? They can be made in any colour scheme, I think of the 3 so far the blue one is my favourite!



I created them because I needed a thank you present for a lovely member of staff at my childrens' nursery, who left on Wednesday and another lovely member of staff at the nursery who turned 21 at the weekend (so young... I think I vaguely remember turning 21!!). They were really fun to come up with and I love the way they each seem to have their own little personality!

Okay, I suppose now I'd better get on with listing these little critters onto the shop and try to stop my 3 year old daughter (Seren) from emptying out the entire contents of my sewing box onto the floor in an attempt to find something interesting to play with!