How to Get Your Pics JUST RIGHT!

I had several customers ask about my photos. "How do you get your photos to look so nice, Becca?" Well heres what I do and some tips and rules to making your crafts look oh the more special when it comes time to sale.

I just bought a sony TX-1 cybershot, but I dont notice a huge difference.

What I use (and you can really use any program) is Corel Painter. But heres the steps I take when I load my photos from my camera:

1) Crop--I crop anything that not important from the picture. If the table is visible, I crop it out. Rule is...no one wants to see your house when viewing photos :) So keep the object photographed the center of attention.

2) I increase the gamma (lightness) and also the contrast. This makes a dark picture brighter and more vivid.

3) I increase the saturation of the colors slightly. I repeat steps 2 and 3 until happy.

4) I sharpen the image.

I can make a dark dark picture look like daylight! Im good at it lol i guess. But something else that helps is also taking pictures on a bright or cloudy day by a window that has a solid filter, like a sheer white curtain. I have by my sewing machine, two large double windows that get southern light exposure. I have these really cheap but EFFECTIVE paper shades I got at Lowes for 3.00 a piece. Its like a miniblind without the gaps and its solid and you peel off a piece of adhesive and stick it to the top of the window frame and let it fall. Its made of cloth or paper and they are super cheap and look nice lol. Best of all, it acts like a light filter, dispersing the light nicely in my work area.

Some other things I do if needed.

If there is too much blue in the picture I add green with the hue function. If the picture looks really yellow..I ADD blue hue to the picture slightly. This can make the biggest difference! You will usually get too much blue if you are outside in the shade or on a cloudy day. You will usually get to much yellow hue if you take pics inside under a reg litthbulb.

I also get creative with angles I use. I dont just take a straight on shot. I put the camera right up on it (as if I'm checking to see if the table is level) Thats what my hubby says it looks like im doing when i take a picture at this angle. Also, having light coming from behind your object, in my case its the window behind the project im photographing, help to create a very nice fade to white effect when you start brightening the image. But i dont let the window show in my photos. Its the hidden light source :) Also use the macro on your camera if it has it. This is a feature that changes the focus as you get REALLY close up on your item you are photographing. So you can show the details. Also grab a bright coordinating fabric and lay it down under your project. SO MUCH BETTER THAN A DARN TABLE SHOWING!

I for one know that photos of an item can make it oh the more desireable. You want to do everything you can to do that project justice. After all you made it and the pics are just as important as the item itself when it comes to getting it sold :)

Becca

Lily Frog Embroidery Applique Design

Lily Frog Applique by Planet Applique is such an adorable new design that I wanted to take a moment and share a tutorial on how she sews out in the hoop. As I designed Lily, she took on her own little personality. Its so difficult to find cute frog for embroidery these days. Clipart is exhausted and I felt to need to draw her from scratch and put her in a sewing format that you can enjoy making! Head over to Planet Applique and get this pattern and return here for a quick step by step.


STEP 1: Get your materials. Fabrics for the applique and a blank, thread and stabilizer. I found a kimono style wrapping onesie at Hancock Fabrics on sale for 6.99. Whats great about these, is that you can open up the garment and so embroidery and applique becomes much easier!



STEP 2: Load Lily to your machine and after pinning your garment in place on top of the hooped stabilizer, run the fabric die line for her body.

Step 3: Lay down the fabric for Lily's body so that it covers the die line. After, a tack down line will stitch. Next Lily's tummy fabric die line stitches. Lay down her tummy fabric.
Allow the tack down for Lily's tummy to stitch and then remove hoop and trim your fabrics. Trim as close as possible while leaving everything hooped.



Step 5: Return hoop to the machine and now its time to have fun! The machine is going to begin stitching her left arm and it will not stop again until we get to her tummy stitching. This should take about 4-6 minutes. When the machine stops over her tummy fabric, get your next thread color (pink) loaded. This stitching is not a satin stitch, but rather a vintage tri stitching. I used pink felt on lily's tummy.

STEP 6: Now Lily's tummy is done and the machine will move directly to her cheeks. Once both cheeks finish stitching, then her big smile goes down, followed by the right eye and then the left eye.

Step 7: Optional. I have added three lovely hearts around Lil's head. If you do not want hearts on your Lily, then you can stop the machine after the left eye is complete and remove her from the hoop. Otherwise, change threads to any shade of pink and let her hearts get stitched.

Take a peek at this lovely little Valentine Kimono Wrap Onesie I decorated with Lily Frog Applique and the Lilypad Heart Applique embroidery design. I put the heart lilypads on the butt of the onesie which really looks outstanding!