Craft Show Preparation 101: The ETSY Eco-Chic Craftacular Craft Show at Whetstone Community Center

Well I don't really know how I got myself into this one but I am certainly glad I did!

I am a member of Etsy Team Columbus and on the outreach committee. We met one day and WHAM! we started a craft show! It has been a great journey. There is a lot involved. There have been bumps and tight turns and learning. That's what I love the most is learning all about what it is that I am doing. I will never stop learning and I don't think anyone should. Learn something every day.

The Eco-Chic Craftacular is a juried arts and crafts show onto which an ecological flair has been placed. We have eco demos. We have recycling. We have crafts and art derived from the things that at one time would have been considered landfill materials. We have quality. We have team effort.

Preparation for the Eco-Chic Craftacular has been challenging. There are so many things that need to be considered in order to have a successful show. We are about fifty percent complete as far as laying the ground work. We had to secure a place and secure a date. Then we had to get a team member to make us some graphics. And another to make a website. We're neary full for vendors and the sponsors are coming through for us as well. Next there will be publicity to arrange.

It is live. It is a live being at this point in time and growing as it should be.

If you are a vendor, good luck to you!

If you are a sponsor, thank you!

I will post more about the Craftacular as we get closer to May 16 and 17. A wrap-up entry the week following our very first team show!

Photographing Beautiful Jewelry Finally!

Well I finally caught on! This is the result of at least two years of hard work. Well, maybe the last two months were the most intense, but I think I have the procedure down, and now I can move on to the decoration part of the photo. I read all the posts about photographing jewelry. I re-read them. I took about a million bad, really bad pictures. Yet, every single time I posted a picture that I thought was an improvement, it looked the same. Too dark. I went to the forums and asked. Too dark. I purchased a new camera. Still too dark. I went to my Etsy Columbus Team members and they said,,,,"Just use photoshop and clean it up." My vision of using Photoshop meant using the "eraser" tool to turn everything white. Nothing worked. So I took all the constants in my quest. I had a lightbox that was huge, so I cut it down. My camera settings were on Macro and No Flash. I had two "utility" lights with 100 watt compact flourescent daylight bulbs. I bought two more lights and two more bulbs. You know if it's too dark, you add more light. Still too dark. Still too dark. I went back to the drawing board time and time and time again. Finally, I started turning the "wheel" on my Canon A590IS. This wheel changes the type of picture you are taking. You want to take a snow picture, put it on snow. You want a portrait, put it on portrait. I took a picture at each setting. I kept all the other contstants constant, with four 100 watt bulbs. I put them on my computer and FOUND the setting that I needed! Yay!!!! The old setting I was using was automatic. The new setting was M for Manual. It has a MACRO setting and it has a No Flash setting. I took two lights away. This may not be perfect, but I am going to use it for a while. They are so much better to me. They are very comparable to others. It's time to post and sell my hand-made jewelry on etsy with my new and improved photos. Have a great day!