Birdy pictures

So yesterday I devised this background for the birds (to use for the Etsy site) and Terry spent hours taking pictures and putting them through editing software and I just wasn't liking anything. Then we looked at some other Etsy sellers' pictures, and it seems like everybody is either using a white background or some other setting that looks very unprofessional. I realized that what I wanted was natural lighting, so this morning I got up and shot these pix on my camera.



First of all, this picture is just to show you the stage. The base is a green door mat and the background is a piece of cardboard that I cut like a display board, and I taped that cloud fabric to it.

But I wanted a tighter shot, so I started taking the picture this way:






Now, the funny thing about it is that I had just gotten through taking all 15 birds' pictures when Terry stepped in and took the picture of the last bird on his camera - which was lucky because the picture I took wound up being blurry, so he saved the day on that one. We had to rush because the light was going to change and become not good. And also it's funny because I used my vastly inferior camera to take these shots, but I'm finally liking them. I think the soft morning light is really nice and having them sitting on the white doll chair is really cute.

But we are going to shoot some other pix in different settings, too. I may just use some of the white background group shots, because they work really well, too. For instance:



I know it's really hard to get my camera to focus in such a tight shot, even in the macro setting. But I'm not sure it matters, if the bird I'm featuring is in focus.

We also talked about taking pictures of the birds in a bonsai garden. That could work, but we'll have to be very careful about keeping them clean. And we need to do it in the next couple of days, too, since I am motivated to get this site up by next weekend.

But you can see how the time just flies and there's things you want to get just right before posting.

Some of the 60 pix I took

Of course, they loaded in the opposite order, and I haven't figured out what wonderful thing I'm going to say about them...  I'll let you know.

What I Meant to Do

This is the necklace I meant to make when I made that last one. I was surprised to find out the store I went to never carried Swarovski beads, so I went on a hunt for them last Friday and found them. The store had moved, but luckily, the concierge at the old mall knew which new mall they had gone to.

I took a 2 hour nap this afternoon and woke up feeling yucky and grumpy. So I made a yucky and grumpy dinner (spaetzle with leftover peppered Brussels sprouts stirred in - yuck. Very German) and after we ate, I decided not to inflict myself on my family for a while and went into the studio to make this.




I took many pictures of the process as I had requests for a tutorial, but Terry took these two pictures of the the finished product on my neck. The previous one is taken with the flash on, but I went in and fooled with the levels. The second one had no flash and I posted it here unfooled with. Which one do you like? Or do you like either?

My intention was to make the beads look like they were just tipped onto my neck and are floating there, and I think that I accomplished that. The necklace isn't very comfortable, tho. Bicones are pokey. But it's very sparkly when it catches the light, and very colorful. It only cost like $23 for all these beads. Not bad.

lunch box

I think I may have sent this to you twice, but the page I sent it from didn't have any way to tell me if the email had sent or not.

So this lunch box measures 7 7/8ths, so it's plenty big enough.  6 cost 19.99, so they're a little over $3 each.  I think that the company will ship to Singapore, too.  And the pristine whiteness of the lunch box begs to be decorated, doesn't it?

The Kitty Container

So this solution presented itself to me yesterday, and altho I wasn't fully functional this morning when I attempted to flesh it out, I think it turned out pretty good. Tell me what you think.






I don't know what else this little bag could be used for, but that was the idea: that it could be useful and functional. And of course it color coordinates with the doll. The next question arises: how much to charge? I'm in the $40-$45 range at the moment.
I wish I could conduct market research.

What I'm Thinkin'

So last week or the week before, while browsing my blogs, I came across an entry (it was on Cutable.com) for this soft sculpture artist in the UK. Here's some of her stuff:









Cute, right? Well guess how much she charges? 35 pounds! That's $55 usd or $70 sing dollars! This made me really mad. I keep seeing these cute little stuffed things, and you know what I'm thinking: I could do that! I could do BETTER than that!

So I decided to try. I was really approaching this as a money-making thing. I already have an Etsy account, I could easily set up a store, or just sell from my blog. Well, yesterday on my mental health day, I made a prototype. The head was all wrong, so I fixed it this morning after our chat. And this is what I came up with:










Random thoughts:
I want to make cats that look like real breeds; this one is obviously siamese, but I have some sketches of other types of cats. I could do the "points" in a color, tho: green or blue or red. Whatever. This one measures almost 7" tall, but that's pretty small. The UK lady puts her toys in a custom box. I would like to do something like that. Chinese take-out boxes? (kung-pao kitty) or maybe a tea/coffee cup? A soft sculpture one, or a real one. In that case, the size will be dependent on the package. There's also these cute metal lunch boxes at Oriental Trading that could be used. Lunchbox Kitty? I could see miniaturizing the little orange hen for this, too. And maybe a goldfish or something like that.

I have such a hard time being able to tell if my designs are cute. I can tell when someone else's designs are. So I'm really looking for constructive criticism. I know you're not into cute. Think of this a soft sculpture instead of a toy. I would have to market it that way, anyway with the button eyes and all that. Not safe for little kids.


So whaddya think?