Fall Necklaces

I am so tired!  Being back at work has been very draining, but I am getting excited about seeing my students on Monday.  I am looking forward to a fun year of teaching!  Since I am going to bed pretty early this week, this will be short (sorry).  I just wanted to announce that I have started posting my fall necklaces in my Etsy shop so they are now available for purchasing!  I will be posting one a day (as long as I remember) until all 20 or so are added to my shop.  I hope you enjoy the first one:

Back to School...

My summer is over.  Sigh.  Now it is busy, busy, busy with lesson planning, photo copying, furniture rearranging, and waking up early.  Part of me is excited to be back at work and see my students again.  But the other part of me looks at my paints and my sketchbook and my fimo and wonders how long it will be before I get to play with them again.  I was planning an afterschool activity around the creation of mandalas and decided to make one of my own.  Here is the work in progress (photos of the finished product to follow):

Photos, photos and more photos...

I have spent the past five hours photographing my necklaces!  This morning I woke up and finished building my light box (which worked beautifully) so I figured I would take the photos and then... well, I didn't actually have any other plans today, but I figured I would do something else.  Instead, I took tons of photos, then downloaded them all and went through them to choose the best ones and delete the blurry, out of focus ones (they always look ok on the camera, but on the computer you can really see any mistakes!).  My set up looked something like this:

photobox on the table (with my small camera case as backdrop for the necklaces), lamp to the left, big fancy camera in front (with tissue paper tied over the flash)

You would think that after all the photos I took and the sorting through I did that, that would be the end of it.  But then my boyfriend looked over my shoulder and asked if I wanted him to show me how to do color correcting on Gimp.  Well, I have heard a lot about the wonders of color correcting and seen some of the photos he has done it too, so I said "Of course!"  I think that is what took up most of my time...  I had twenty necklaces with at least two photos of each and while it is not hard to color correct, it does take a bit of time.  I think it was worth it though.  Take a look at the difference:

before

after

Let's hope all this time I put in eventually pays off and I become an up-and-coming, in-demand jewelry designer...

Light Box

I am working on making a light box.  I made one when I lived in Chicago and took photos of a rose wilting.  Not great subject matter, but the photos turned out really great thanks to the light box.  So, in hopes of improving the quality of the photos of my necklaces, I am constructing a new one.  Sadly, I was almost done when I realized I have no white tissue paper, so that will be added tomorrow, but here is my new (very small) light box:

 

All the sections are cut out and it is ready to be glued together! 

 from the top

the freshly painted inside

P.S. The No Bake Chocolate Cake I made the other day is delicious!  If you are a chocolate lover this is something you must try!

Painting Break

I took a break from jewelry and have been filling up all the canvases I bought this summer.  I am amazed how much cheaper canvases are here.  It is much more affordable to buy several of them and I may even splurge and buy a giant one because I've always wanted to make a huge paining!  I am pretty pleased with how the painting went and since I hung them up it made the apartment much more colorful :)

I also finally tried a recipe from one of the food blogs I like.  It is a no bake chocolate cake.  It looks like it will be amazing!  I have not tasted it yet (it has to refrigerate), but I am hoping it is as good as it looks.  Here is the link in case you are a chocolate lover: http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/no-bake-chocolate-cake-recipe.html.  Happy cooking!