Showing posts with label Etsy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Etsy. Show all posts

Saturday, September 21, 2013

The week that got away

I really thought that with a 4 day business trip, I'd be able to get so much done! I was wrong! Every night was spent doing the hours long "quick meeting wrap up" followed by dinner with co-workers. Call me what you will, but I really don't enjoy that part of traveling. After a long day interacting with people and being "on," I just really would prefer to go back to my room and be alone with my thoughts. Or the Kardashians or something lol.

I also thought that the 2.5 hour ferry ride would be a good time to get some knitting (or in this particular case, crocheting) done. Again, I was wrong! The ferry DID actually go this time around, but it was really, really rough. I think I was able to crochet for about 15 minutes before the constant rolling of the waves got to me, despite the dramamine I'd taken. (By the way, fun fact. Apparently dramamine comes in "drowsy" and "less drowsy," not the NON drowsy I was hoping for!) I put my work down and tried to focus on the horizon like they tell you to, and it was not doing much from my inside seat. I guess the whole point is to focus on something that is not moving, but when it's surrounded by a moving window, well, it doesn't work! Eventually I got up and went outside to the back deck which had the benefit of much needed fresh air, an unencumbered view of said steady horizon, and a lovely English (her) and Scottish (him) vacationing couple. Their lovely accents were apparently soothing to my upset tummy, because while I got nothing useful done, at least my lunch stayed with me. I was lucky I went out when I did because a bunch of other passengers were not so lucky. Once that motion sickness really gets hold of you, you're pretty much just a goner till you hit land.

Despite all of my whiny lack of downtime, I did manage to complete an Etsy order for the lovely Mari of Crab + Fish, as well as one half of one sleeve of a baby sweater.


The striped baby elf hat in gray and white is on its way!


I need to investigate some cuter packaging methods I think. It's one of those things I'm loathe to spend money on, because I'm never really sure what sort of difference it makes beyond a 3 second "oh, that's cute" reaction. I feel like I should also maybe make up some cards or tags or something for "branding," ha. I feel like I should see if this sticks more than a month or so though before investing any money beyond the basics. I'm a perennial under-spender though when it comes to my hobbies. Which I suppose explains why I still use a hideous knitting needle case that I got off Craigslist when I learned to knit....about 5 years ago. Self, I'd say it stuck. I will admit to having a sewing project on my list to take care of that though! Now if I could just find some time.....



Saturday, September 14, 2013

Knit season




So strange that I was in a tank top earlier this week and yet today's casual Friday outfit of a sweater dress and leggings was totally appropriate. I wore flats without socks as I can't quite bear to break out the boots just yet because once you do there's just no going back. Yet it either didn't warm up much today or it had gotten cool again because I was SO COLD when I got home. I'm not ready to turn the heat on just yet, but I AM ready to pull out my knit cottage slipper socks. I made these probably 4? 5 years ago? And I just love them. They are so warm and cozy (and fit in rather nicely with the debris of a child who loves reading and stuffed animals lol) that I keep coming back to them every year. These are basically my test version. I've improved the way I handle the ribbing in such a chunky yarn, and subsequent pairs I've made about an inch shorter in the foot for an average (7-8) size because mine are ever slightly too large. But I never make myself a new pair. Must be nostalgic or something. I've given a few pairs as gifts that have been quite well received, and I put them up in my shop last year on a whim. And wouldn't you know, they've become one of my most popular and inquired about items. As the knitwear season rolls around again, I have to say, I can see why!

Monday, September 9, 2013

Trials in product photography and new listing in the shop!



Right off the bat, I am not a good photographer. In fact, I'd just go ahead and say I'm a downright BAD photographer. It's just one of those things that I can't get to click (oh lord, no pun intended) for me. For years I decided it was just my point and shoot, as everything I took came out blurry and dark, and my solution was just to not take pictures. Win! However, on the rare occasion when I could get over my awkwardness about even taking out the camera to begin with, I'd go to download them to the computer, and realize that the Christmas pictures I was saving were the first pictures there since the Christmas before. Now I'm not saying I want to photograph every waking moment of my life, but I'd like to be able to look back on more than one day a year!

So 2 years ago, I decided, well maybe it's not all me! Maybe it's the camera! I mean, what problem can't you improve by throwing money at it?! However my thrifty side said that there was no way I was dropping $4 or 500 at a DSLR for something that realistically probably wasn't going to improve my pictures, so I went to Craigslist. I managed to find a 10 year old Canon Rebel XT. Definitely not a top of the line model, but I figured it was something that I could try to learn on. So I got my camera for about $200 I think, and I proceeded to put it in auto and use it just like my point and shoot! Yeah...that didn't help a ton! I mean, things got less blurry, and I had the courage to actually use it more, but still, there are so many buttons and modes that I just didn't know anything about.

For my birthday last year, I decided to go ahead and learn this darn thing. I tried looking at a lot of tutorials online, and actually reading my manual, but it still just felt like Greek to me. I decided that the best thing would be to take a class, so that's what I asked for as my present - one of those extended learning seminars for beginners through my alma mater. This...kind of worked. I mean, at least I now kind of know what a lot of the modes do, and in certain circumstances I feel ok putting it into manual for low light situations, which seem to be all of my situations inside my house. But I'm still bad. I can't seem to get a grip on white balancing, and I end up doing a lot of adjusting after the fact in Photoshop. I think what I probably need to do, apart from practice, is sign up for an intermediate class. Maybe I'll ask for that for my birthday this year!

In the meantime, I want to try to make sure my Etsy listings don't look like total garbage. #1, I want people to look at them. But #2, I can't say in the description, "hey, this totally looks better in person! Trust me! Just buy it, then you'll see!" So I need to try to make my items look realistic and try to convey the cuteness through the screen on a plain, non-distracting background. I was reading a book that talked about a super simple construction of a light box. Just clip smooth white paper onto cardboard and set it up like a box with 3 sides, aim a lamp into it, and shoot away!



Fail.

I mean, I guess it's a little better than just putting my little hats on my white desk and shooting from above. But not much. I think maybe my biggest problem was scale. Even for the baby hats I'm mainly working on, an 11x17 sheet of paper wasn't big enough so that I wasn't catching the edges of the cardboard in the shot, which just seemed to throw off the colors even with my feeble attempts at editing the photos after the fact. Also, I even went ahead and started writing up a listing for this cute little pumpkin head hat, and that little leaf just seemed so feeble! It was late, and I decided that it really needed more work before it was ready for sale, so I knew I'd have to retake the pictures anyway, so I might as well try to make them better.

I poked around a bit on Etsy to see what other people were doing. Of course the cutest and most common photo set up was the hat on an adorable baby's head. Duh! And I even have one of those lying around. However, I've taken a stance of not wanting to splash my baby all over the internet. We've not posted a single picture of her on line, even on Facebook. (We do all our family photo sharing via emails and texts.) So....it really didn't seem like a good idea to bend my rules to sell something! Then I saw some pretty attractive shots set up either outside, or in a little vignette somewhere in the house. I opted against an outdoor option because I work for a living and most of my spare time - when I do this stuff - is in the dark. So somewhere in the house it is!

We have espresso colored dining chairs and off-white curtains, so I thought that might be a nice and somewhat consistent background I could use for most of my items.


Except, well, reflection. No matter where I aimed my lamp I just got this hot spot on the not-leather leather-ish fabric of the chair. And then I thought....wait....couldn't I just take that curtain and use it like a photo backdrop?


I think....win?!



Yeah, it's still way less good than a professional would do. I think ultimately if I keep this up with any level of success, my best bet would be to swap props for photos and have a pro shoot my knits. But this is not that time, and if we're going to go, we're going to go grass roots.

Does anyone have any other tips for product photography that a total photography neophyte like me could try to pick up?

And also, what do you think of the new hat? I added a second, larger leaf that I think balances it out a little. I can't wait to see my little one sporting it all next month!!


Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Back in business!



Ok, well I did it. I reopened my Etsy shop! I'd been on the edge about it, which basically means I'd already decided to do it because if I've started talking about it out loud it won't take much to push me to just go ahead with it. So when my good friend Courtney told me that yep, she still wanted a couple of my baby elf hats, I felt like the time was right. If you're going to reopen, what better push than a sale? Those funny little hats are fun and quick to make, and they were one of my best sellers. True story, I thought they were a little weird at first, but everyone else seemed to like them so I went with it. I made a rookie mistake in making one in hot pink and white for a woman who DEFINITELY wanted one, and totally never paid for it. Derp. I mean, it's a cottage industry (ba dum cha) and it's just me, so it's not like I'm going to have stock sitting around. I mean yeah, I knit for fun, but not so I can have piles of unused baby hats, right? So I got sick of looking at this sad hot pink reminder of my lack of business knowledge, and my baby needed a hat, so I put it on her last year and we ran some errands. And wouldn't you know, we were stopped by just about every 3rd person to gush over how adorable her hat was? So now those little striped hats hold a special place in my heart. :)

Anyway, if you're out there, I'd love for you to stop by the shop, or let me know in the comments if there's anything you think would be a good addition! I'm on a bit of a roll, and I need projects to keep my hands busy!

(and oh my lord, what is it about iphone photos that simply will not rotate properly when I bring them into blogger! How annoying! Almost as annoying as the ridiculously low quality of my photo work lol, but I basically took this just to let Courtney know they were ready.)