Adventures in Bookbinding

I'm in a book! Let me rephrase - my work is in a book! Jeannine Stein author of Rebound and the newly published Adventures in Bookbinding contacted me a while back about participating in her new book. So I made 2 polymer clay book covers that she then bound into BEAUTIFUL diaries. They look amazing! The book is available through Boarders, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.

I did a show this past weekend and had her book as well as the 2 handmade ones on display and I got such positive feedback about them that I think I will have to make some more to have at my next shows. First I will have to learn how to do the binding - but that's OK because I have Jeannine's book!

If you click on the preview of the book you can see one of mine on page 6. It is the green cover with the pink cherry blossoms. The full write up on my books is on page 83. Hooray!

Big Announcement Coming Soon!

Stay tuned to my blog in the next few days I have an exciting announcement (well exciting for me anyway). It has to be postponed a few days because I am waiting for something to arrive in the mail. To be continued...

New Camera

My old camera finally bit the dust a few weeks ago. I decided that I didn't want to put off buying a new one too long with my newest addition growing and changing everyday. I also wanted to be able to take better pictures of my work without having to spend forever on photoshop trying to make the picture actually look like the real thing. I got a pretty nice Cannon and I am now trying to figure out how to make use of the SUPER COOL settings that it has! The 2 bottom pictures were taken using the "poster" setting. I had some fun taking pictures of the kids today. I used up the whole memory card in about 20 minutes - note to self: 14 mega pixel camera needs a bigger memory card. So fun!

My Latest Work of Art

Here is my newest masterpiece! Eden Naomi, born on Wednesday!

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