Show and Tell

Between the holiday crunch I'm feeling (already!) and life's little challenges (I have to call an electrician today because I'm pretty sure we have wires melting in our wall. Ack!) I've been getting a few beads and pieces of jewelry made. I've had a few commissions for pieces come in all at once, and that's exciting, but now I really need to get to work.

Here are a couple of sets I've made recently:



And a pair of earrings I made:


I'm working on a necklace to match.

I still need to experiment with photography techniques. I'm looking at a couple of setups on eBay for this. For example, photographing earrings laying down is probably not the best presentation. These earrings are so dainty and sparkly in person, but that just doesn't come across in the photo. Better lighting may help.

Off to work!

Fancy Photo Setup - Take Two

I found a tub that will work better for taking bead photos. Now the trick will be finding the proper lighting. So far I've discovered the best lighting is natural sunlight, but that can be hard to come by this time of year in the Pacific Northwest. Yesterday was gorgeous. It was 70 degrees out there and not a cloud in the sky.


I do think I captured this bead at the wrong time of day for the best lighting, a little too late, but I can tweak the highlights and shadows in a photo editing program to correct some of the lighting issues. Some colors of glass are just harder to photograph than others as well. When I first started selling my beads a couple of years ago I didn't realize I would need to become a photographer, web designer, accountant, and business manager, but that's what small business is all about. Lots to learn and do.


My plan for tomorrow at the torch is dots dots dots. I stink at putting dots on beads. They never go just where I want them. That's why I make so many swirly beads, easier to disguise the mistakes that way! It's time to get some dot practice.

Bead Photography

I went out and bought a fancy new photography setup so I can take nice pictures of my beads because I threw out my old photo setup in a decluttering frenzy. The photos are important as I plan at some point to sell my beads online again.

Would you like to see this fancy setup?


It's not going to work, though. Silly me. I bought the wrong kind of bowl and it casts shadows all over the beads when I put it on top of the beads for photographing. The purpose of the bowl is to diffuse the light and cut down on little glare spots on the beads, but this bowl creates more problems than it fixes.

A few beads from yesterday's torch session (again, not cleaned yet.)

Ugh! Shadows AND glare. Back to the drawing board.