My Husband Says I Have A Problem...

And I think he might be right.

Where the Magic Happens

Hello there! I love my Etsy shop. It's lots of fun. The thing is, when I decided to set up shop, I had no idea how much of a pain in the bum it was actually going to be to have good pictures of my items. Fortunately, my super smart husband was there to save the day - He made me a handy lightbox. It was easy to make, and the pictures come out great! It did take a while to get my method perfected. I'm talking weeks, maybe months. I still frequently find little tricks to make the pictures even better when I am editing them, but basically I've got it down now.

Here's the lightbox. Let me tell you, it's super fancy. It consists of a cardboard box with three of the sides cut out and covered with a sheet of tissue paper.


I just set it up on the floor in the living room when I want to take pictures. That way I can have a Lifetime movie going on the TV to entertain me during my photo shoot. I use three clamp on worklights, each with 90 watt floodlights in them for my lighting. It looks crude, but it really works well. For a couple of months my setup was out of commission because we had to put a couple of the bulbs in our backyard light, and one of the worklights quit working. During that time, I tried every place and every light around the house I could think of to try, and nothing worked as well as the lightbox. In fact, I didn't get any useable pictures at all during that time. I am so glad to have it all working again!

Now, the pictures I take in the lightbox aren't instantly ready to use. I do have to do some editing and cropping to make them pretty. That's where Paint Shop Pro comes in. Alot of people use Adobe Photoshop, but I don't have that. Paint Shop Pro works great, though! Here are some before and after photos.


Before:


After:


Before:

After:

Pretty neat, huh? I like it!

A Lost Christmas Tradition

Now that it's finally November, we are getting really excited about decorating for Christmas. It's tempting to go ahead and get started on the festivities, but we know it's still way too early, so we are just sitting here twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the time to arrive. I figured that to help occupy my time while I wait, I would tell you all a Christmas decorating story.

When I was growing up, part of the Christmas decor was a big clothespin reindeer. It's probably about 2 1/2 feet tall, and it sat near the front door to greet us when we got home. After my husband and I got married, we inherited the reindeer to help spread the holiday cheer in our new home. There was a catch, though. Mr. Reindeer was in need of a serious facelift. This is where a Christmas tradition was born.

Our first Christmas, we set him out and said "We will fix him up soon." Sadly for Mr. Reindeer, we never got around to fixing him up. At the end of the season, we put him away, vowing that the next holiday season, we would fix him up as soon as we got him out. How sad he must have been when we got him out the next year and he had to spend the whole season in his sad and saggy state. This happened for a few more years as well. We joked that it was a Christmas tradition to pretend that we were going to fix up the sad clothespin reindeer, and we couldn't actually fix it because that would mean we would miss out on a fun Christmas tradition. It was pretty sad, really, because we had this poor dilapidated clothespin reindeer sitting there to greet our visitors, and every time someone came in, we had to explain our peculiar Christmas tradition of not fixing it up so they wouldn't think we were weird for having it there. Well, they probably still thought we were weird, but at least they had the background story for this particular weirdness.

Last Christmas, Mr. Reindeer's day finally came. I like to think that when I got home with the bag of supplies his poor droopy little ears perked up a little with anticipation of the fun that was to come.


Here is what he looked like before. He really was in a sad state of affairs.



























As I began dismantling him, I found proof that he is indeed a boy reindeer. Not only is his nose red, his "parts" are red too!


















































After lots of work, here is Mr. Reindeer, totally refurbished.
























Sure, we lost a Christmas tradition, but he really looks smashing, don't you think?

What to do, What to do...

I have alot of hobbies. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I think "Hey, I want to sew today!" Sometimes I wake up and I think "Hey, I want to make jewelry today!" Well, sometimes there are days like today. I woke up today rarin' to go, wanting to craft all day. The problem is, I want to knit and make jewelry. Obviously, I can't do both at the same time, so I have been sitting here all day trying to make a decision on which I will choose. It is now 3:30 PM, and I have made no progress towards reaching this decision. I listed a few items in my shop while I pondered, but for the most part I have nothing to show for my day. Just watch - Late tonight, I will figure out exactly what I want to craft, and by then it will be time to go to bed! In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy the Lifetime Movie Network.

How Frustrating!

I worked hard last week and over the weekend to get a bunch of stuff made to list in my Etsy shop. My big plan was to take pictures of all of it this morning, then spend the afternoon cropping and editing photos and listing things. So... I took a ton of pictures, then I uploaded them. I looked through them to find out which things didn't come out very well so I could reshoot them. I got all those items gathered up and was all ready to start the final batch of pictures when the batteries in the camera went dead. And wouldn't you know it - All the other ones were dead too! Now I have to wait hours until some of them get charged up so I can finish. Oh well.

What a Nice Surprise

Ok, a while back I made some fun fabric Christmas ornaments. I had a whole box of them all made up and ready to sell. I figured that August would be a good time to start listing Christmas items in my Etsy shop, so yesterday, I went in search of the box of ornaments. Hmm... Where did I put it? Oh, no! I think we put it out with the pile of stuff for charity when we were trying to get rid of some of our piles of stuff to make room for more piles of stuff! Well, I figured that it was no big deal - I can always make more. So I went to my fabric stash this morning to get the Christmas fabric out to make more fun ornaments, and do you know what I found? A stack of Christmas fabric, all cut out to make ornaments with! What could be better than that? I'll tell you what - Most of them were already sewn up and ready to finish! What a fun surprise!