New Jewelry - New Pictures

I'm making up for lost time! Another blog post and more listings in my Etsy Jewelry shop. The links to my shop are on the side bar of the page and you can see a preview of what I have in my shops there. Getting listings up takes longer than I anticipated. I think that always seems to be the case. I spent a good chunk of the day yesterday taking pictures of some of my jewelry and then trying to edit them. I just have a basic camera and I was convinced that was a big part of why my pictures just don't turn out as well as I would like. However, I've now learned the secret! PHOTOSHOP! Call me naive but I just thought that good photographers just took good pictures, period. Now I'm no photographer. But when you are selling things to people through the internet, where they can't touch and feel and try on, your sales are only as good as your pictures. I'm still no expert, and I will need many more late nights playing with Photoshop, but I've discovered a few tricks that really helped my shots.
Here is an example -
This is the before picture. They always seem to have this grey haze that I didn't know how to fix. But with Photoshop...
no haze and the image is so crisp you could just reach out and touch it. YES! Now on to the next challenge, listing description. Maybe that will be a good post for tomorrow :)

My Big Girl

This week was Lena's first day of Kindergarten. When did she grow up? She is loving school! I thought she would have lots of trouble getting up in the morning. Sleeping (or at least not getting out of bed) until 9-9:30am was not unheard of for her. But this week when I went into her room at 7:15am she sat straight up in bed and couldn't wait to get ready. So here are the pictures of my big girl on her first day.

Etsy Treasury

I'm in an Etsy Treasury! My cane, that is. Very exciting, here is the link

Chrysanthemums

New chrysanthemum canes are now in my etsy shop khernandezcanes! Ready for Autumn clay projects!

News and New Stuff

Alright, once again I apologize for the gigantic gaps between my posts. Ahh, such is life.

So on to the news...There are new things in my life - first of all there will be a new addition to our family this winter! I am now in my 21st week of pregnancy - Baby #3 should be arriving around January 7, 2011. Everyone is excited as we get ready for a new little one.

That is the family news and now for the clay news.

I have a new Etsy store! khernandezcanes.etsy.com This store is devoted just to polymer clay canes. My other store khernandez.etsy.com will be for my finished jewelry and other finished art pieces.

So far I have several new canes listed and I hope to get some jewelry up in the next couple weeks.

Since I always like to add pictures, here are some canes! I would show you all pictures of my expanding waistline but it's not quite as cute for #3 as it was with #1 :)

Inspiration

Yesterday's post on Polymer Clay Daily was about artist Carol Blackburn. When I clicked on the link I saw some awesome necklaces she had made with a technique I'd been wanting to try. So I did.

The result was great! I wore the finished necklace today and got so many compliments. (Thanks for the inspiration Ms. Blackburn!)I will definitely be trying it again...but perhaps with a different twist ;)

What is it they say about good intentions??

I am the worst blogger in the world! Right after I say how much I want to be better, I go forever without posting. I haven't been working on anything new lately so I've felt like I don't have much to blog about. I do have a ton of new ideas and a ton of new supplies that I recently ordered. The problem is I don't seem to have a ton of time to get the ideas out of my head and into reality. Hopefully the next post (whenever that happens) will have more content and pictures of new and exciting pieces!

Feeling Edgy

I was asked the other day to make some gauged earrings. Maybe there is a different term for earrings like this but I don't know what it would be. Anyway, there are a lot of ways to design this style of earring ranging from super simple to elaborately twisted designs. These are more on the simple side but I would love to try some more complicated ones. Really a basic concept, but staying symmetrical takes a careful eye.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!


P.S. Having another "clay day" after school today!

Featured Artist

Today I would like to showcase the work of a budding artist. Magdalena Ester Hernandez spends most of her free time creating. Her favorite medium is colored pencils but she also excels with crayons and markers.

My daughter Lena loves to draw and I keep a lot of her pictures in a folder. She gives them away to everyone, her preschool teachers, Grandma, my friends. Yesterday I thought I would take some pictures to share with you all since this is mostly a blog about art, but also me and my family. So here is little combo of both. BTW Lena is 4 years old.

This was yesterday's creation. She puts hearts on everything. And she wrote her name all by herself.

This one is from the "Beach Series" she made different pictures with coconut trees, orange trees and banana trees.

(I drew the little bird and the crazy looking squirrel, but Lena did everything else. I think she is pretty good for 4 :)

Canes

I'm going to try to be a better blogger. I will try to post something at least once a week. That is being very ambitious for me. Here are some canes I finished in the past week or so.

It's a Miracle!

I tried my camera one more time this morning and I guess it made friends with the computer now because it worked! Hooray! So here are some pictures of a few things, some of the ones I took weren't so nice when they were bigger than the tiny screen on my camera. But a least now I can retake and get them on the computer!

These are some of heart pieces I did for the Heartfest show. The bracelet has more BLING! than anything I've ever made. Heart beads on heart chain and a heart clasp...I was following a theme :)

My set up at the show. I have never set up my booth to be open on 3 sides like this. It was different - changed it up a bit the next day by opening the triangle (with the shelves) into more of a curved wall.

Updates - and anyone know how to fix a camera problem?

So I haven't posted for a very long while. What else is new huh? The weather has been crazy here in the Midwest and there have been many days so far that school has been closed. Personally, I love that! Snow days mean Noe gets to stay home with kids and me or do pastor stuff like visiting families. That is his favorite part of pastoring - he is the most "people person" person I have ever met.

SO... on to clay stuff. I have been making a lot of new pieces lately, and I took pictures of most of them to share with the world via my outdated blog, BUT... They are stuck in my camera. I don't know what is wrong but for some reason my computer won't recognize my camera. It starts reading the pictures and then a few seconds later tells me that it can't locate my camera and to make sure it is connected. ?? I don't know. So until I can figure this out my blog will remain picture less, which is way boring for a blog. I don't know about anyone else but when I read peoples' blogs I care about the pictures!

I had a show last week in Des Moines. Honestly I was disappointed with how it went. I only do a couple of full weekend shows a year because I have a weekly Sunday commitment ;) So I was hoping that it would be time well spent. But it was really slow. I spoke with some of the other artists and some of them didn't sell anything at all, or not even enough to cover their expenses. Fortunately, I did manage to come away in the black but not so much that I will go back next year. Oh well lesson learned right?

I've been teaching 2 art classes for kids for the past few weeks. They have been going really well and I think the kids are having a good time. Each week we make a project and then I take everything home to bake. I've been really impressed with the kids and hopefully I'll have some pictures to post before too long.

Lastly, this Friday I get to go to a "Clay Day"!!! I'm super excited! The teacher with whom Noe (husband) is working and another teacher in the school are polymer clayers too! So we are getting together to play clay. I think there may even be a few more who are joining us and it should be a lot of fun. I'm planning on making canes all night so I'll have some new stock in my Etsy shop....as soon as the camera situation gets fixed that is.