DIY Craft Show Displays

If you're like me, you take joy in making everything by hand, not just jewelry. Most of my craft show displays have been either made from scratch or customized. I do this both because it is often less expensive to build than it is to buy, and because it gives displays a unique look so they don't blend in at shows.

Here's a list of some of my favorite ways to build or customize craft show displays. Feel free to adapt them to suit your tastes, after all, your business should reflect you!

1. Painted Thrift Store Finds

I have found wooden bowls, wicker baskets, odd candle pedestals and wooden divided lunch trays at thrift stores. Usually, they don't look like much when I find them and have a good deal of wear or staining. I like to sand them lightly with a medium grit paper (around 400) and then paint them with a couple of coats of interior latex paint. It gives them a fresh face and if you paint them all in the same color, it can give you a cohesive display even if the pieces are different in shape.

The reason I use interior latex is because it dries harder than artists acrylic. If you paint objects with acrylic, it will be more likely that the paint will stick to plastic, glass, paper or other painted surfaces, and lift onto the objects being displayed. The safest way to protect against any paint lifting is to line the container or tray with fabric or a filler before adding your display items.


2. Paper Mache Bust / Necklace display

I started with a framework of mesh and wire, but you could just as easily use a balloon for the head and crumpled up newspaper taped together for the neck and shoulders. You don't need to put features onto the bust, just shape it into the general impression of a life sized head, neck and shoulders. Another option is to use plaster of paris to actually cast a bust of yourself or a friend, then once it is cured add a base with more plaster so that it will stand up.

Either method of building a bust can then be painted, decoupaged, or left as is, depending on the look you're going for.


3. Suitcase

I've said before that I love suitcase displays, especially if they are made so that they can just be opened and popped up on a table, for a super fast setup. One method to accomplish this is to remove the "guts" of the suitcase or briefcase, up to and including the liner if you're comfortable with it. You can then re-line the case with fabric or vinyl, or you could even paint the inside of it if the original liner came out cleanly. You could add cork board sheeting, chalk board paint, or a magnetic surface to the inside of the lid, where you can hang items for display, write messages, or display magnetic items. You can use self-adhesive hooks or magnetic hooks as well.

The bottom of the case can be filled with bins to hold items or it can serve as a large basket for loose items.


4. Frames

I have used frames a few different ways in my displays: I covered a frame with fine mesh to display earrings & necklaces, I've filled a frame with a sheet of cork-board to display thumbtacks or use tacks as hooks to display jewelry. There is also the link I posted previously for filling small frames with ring-holders. I like frames because they can be used either flat on a table or vertically, especially if the original back of the frame is still in-tact and can hold it upright or allow it to hang from a fixture. The frame itself can add some visual blank space between sections of your display, giving the eye a place to rest before moving on to the next display. They can also be painted to match the rest of your display and you can even paint over a cork board in a frame.


5. Tiered Displays

You could buy tiered dessert/serving trays at some major stores and vintage stores, but it's fun to make a unique version yourself. If you can find a few glasses (stemmed are great) or even medium-tall candle holders, as well as some assorted sizes of plates, they can be glued together in a stack to form a unique tiered display. I recommend using a glue like E9000 or Gorilla, something that adheres well to glass & smooth surfaces. White glue or hot glue does not normally form a good adhesion to non-porous surfaces.


There are many other ways to build & create your own displays, these just happen to be my favorites. More ideas can be found on the JellyPins Pinterest board, and I add to it often when I find fun ideas! Amber

Photography - Finding the Sweet Spot (of focus)

I'm going to use a photograph that is a much larger scale than product photography typically is, in order to better illustrate where the focal point falls in an image.





In the first photo, the majority of the picture is out of focus, but near the middle there is a crisp area of pavement that catches the eye. The second photo has been cropped so that the focused area is closer to the bottom of the frame, which feels more natural to the eye than having out of focus area at the bottom.

This is because our eyes find it natural that the closest part of the picture is in focus, but when the bottom of the frame is out of focus, our eyes attempt to bring that area into focus when we look at it. It can actually cause physical discomfort.

When you are taking photos of small items using a macro setting on your camera, you want the leading edge of the object to be in that crisply focused area. Here is an example:



Here is the photo before cropping, with a line indicating where the focus zone falls:



When cropping your photos of small objects, it is best to have that focus zone on the bottom 1/3 line. This is a concept of photography, where the visual frame is divided in thirds horizontally and in thirds vertically. In framing a photo, the guideline is to have the primary subject on one of the lines delineating the thirds of the photo. Here is the image again, with an overlay grid showing the horizontal and vertical thirds:



Notice that the focal line which was marked earlier is now lined up with the bottom 1/3 line, and the left most area of the product is approximately over the left 1/3 line. When cropping, the crop would follow the outer edges of the grid, so that the thirds remain lined up as they are.



That leaves you with a photo cropped so that the focal line is in a very comfortable and natural spot, which draws the eye (and the viewer) in!

How to Make Craft Shows a Little Easier

Anyone who has sold handmade goods at a craft show knows it is exhausting. Not only are we operating a pop-up store for hours on end, but we have to make that store appear and disappear, often all in a single day. It makes me tired just thinking about it!

Over the years, I've learned a few tactics to help make the craft show experience a little easier:


Ready To Go Displays -
Any aspect of your display that can be arranged or set up before hand will save you time and effort on the day of the show. Jewelry trays with the items laid out in advance, hanging racks with the jewelry hung on it and folding cases that stand vertically on the table are just a few examples of methods to have jewelry laid out and ready to go in a snap.



Business Operations in a Briefcase -
You can use a briefcase, small suitcase, lock box or even a plastic container to keep all of your transaction tools in one place and ready to go from show to show. I use a briefcase that holds my packaging & bags, change, pens, business cards, Square reader, calculator and ledger. When I arrive at a show and set up, I just put the case on the table, open it up and I'm ready to go. Because most of the items stay in there between shows, I always know where everything is and there is no last minute searching the night before or day of the show.



Folding Dolly / Carts -
These are really efficient because they fold up to be kept in your vehicle or under a table at a show, but they can hold a great deal with the addition of bungee cables. I've used these for years, and it has reduced the number of load-in trips to just one, and saved my back!


Pricing Reminder Card -
This is most effective if you have groups of items that are all the same price. I like to price these with signs, but it has lead to moments where I forget exactly what was on the sign so in mid-transaction, I have to run around the table and look at the sign. In order to make it easier, I take an index card and write down the price of any of these types of items and keep it in my briefcase. That way, I only need to glance at the card for a moment to make sure I'm charging the right prices.


Setting up Square -
The Square app has the ability to store your item information. During a transaction, whether cash or credit, you can tap the item you are selling rather than having to put items in individually or tally them up & write them in a ledger separately. Click here for Square's instructions on setting this up for the smart phone app.


With these tips you can set your display up ahead of time, have everything in one place & get it into your booth a little easier, so that you can spend all your energy on having a great show!

Amber

Photography - Reaching Nirvana

And of course, by Nirvana, I mean a white background in photos.  Neither is easy, though I dare say getting a white background is easier than reaching Nirvana.   Maybe, I can make the white background thing a little bit easier.  That way we can all put our energy into finding Nirvana. LOL

So the first place you want to start is to mess around with settings on your camera.  Fortunately, even among point-and-shoots like mine (Canon Power Shot SX110 IS), those settings are fairly standardized.  Some cameras may not have some of these, if you're not sure about yours check out the manual.  (or search for tutorials online for your specific camera and it's features, which will probably be clearer)

The setting I've used in the past was Indoor.  I'd set it to macro, maybe bump up the light balance a bit and take dozens of pictures.  Then, I'd go into my photo editing software to clean it up, and find that the backgrounds weren't quite so pretty and white as they looked on the camera screen.  I've been doing this for years, and somehow I still forget on occasion that my camera screen is a little overly bright.  Anyway, in using the software to edit, I would hit a point where I could either get a nice white background -or- I could have the colors actually look like the thing I had photographed.  Not a fun choice!

                                          Way too much magenta!  Ewww.

So, I decided to try the Program setting on my camera, and change the white balance setting to Tungsten.  This is because I use regular non-fluorescent bulbs, which have a yellow/orange cast.  Also known as warm white!  Lovely in rooms, not so much in photos.

                                          Too much blue, not enough green.

This setting produced an improved color temperature over the indoor setting, so I shut off the lights on my lightbox and was about to upload the pictures...

And then it occurred to me that perhaps I should try shooting without my lights on at all.  It's pretty bright here in Phoenix, and the open side of my lightbox faces 1/2 a wall of glass, so it was worth a shot.

                                          Pretty close to aaahhh-mazing!


Bingo.  The color temperature looked considerably more neutral on Indoor with the lights off than it did on program with the lights on.  So, I cranked up my light balance (the +/- button) to +1.5 and...


Bam!

                                         There it is!

All I had to do at that point was up the contrast a bit to get that perfect white, and use a big white paintbrush to remove the darker areas around the edges of the picture, to arrive at the final image:

                                                      I dream about pictures like this.

So there you have it... a brilliant white background and all I had to do was turn off the stinking lights.  Who'da thunk it?  Okay probably everyone else but every now and then I'm not as bright as I pretend to be ;)

So, here are all of the pics side by side so you can see the startling differences!

Hope this helps!!


Next installment will be about ... WHY IS THERE GLITTER IN MY ICED TEA?  Oh, sorry.  Noticed some glitter in mah tea.  Risk of that craft that I do.  Anyway,

We'll be talking about macros and cropping.  Or, "How to make the focal point feel like it is at a natural place in the photo so the viewer's eyes don't go buggy"  It matters more than it seems like it should!

<3
Amber

Photography Revisited pt 1

In the time that has passed since I last wrote about product photography for online shops, I've learned something interesting.

I turned my shop into an accidental guinea pig when I switched all of my photographs to a grey slate background from plain white.  I had always liked the white, but I found it much easier to get natural looking colors by shooting on a grey background.

I had not realized the side effect that changing my pictures would have.  When Etsy users are building treasuries, there are certain qualities the look for in photographs, one of the dominant traits being a white or very pale background.  Treasuries like these are far more likely to make it to the homepage as well.

I have read many past forum threads where users complain about the overtly white backgrounder treasuries, with feelings that range from them being boring to being overtly exclusive and unfair.  However, sites like Amazon require sellers to list the main photo with only the item for sale pictured, and it must be on a white background.  I realize that Etsy did not start out as being remotely in the same realm as amazon, but as Etsy has grown they have needed to compete with such web giants, and let's face it, if they did not then there wouldn't be as many users browsing the site as there are today.

But, I digress.  The important takeaway from my unintentional experiment is that the number of treasuries my items have been featured in has dropped like a stone.  It started out somewhere around one or more per day to maybe two per week.  Also, now when my items are in treasuries, it's usually in that last row - the one that isn't seen on the front page unless other items sell while it's up.  In unison with the drop in treasuries, my sales dropped as well.

Knowledge gained: white backgrounds matter, as does the color balance of the overall photo.  You don't need to give every photo on a listing the white background treatment, just the first photo.  ( the one the thumbnail generates from)

Of course there are other factors, including depth of focus, sharpness, and positioning, but if all those elements are in place but the background isn't white, you could be missing out on treasury time!

As always, don't be afraid to experiment and find out what works for you- let the numbers be your guide as to whether your pictures are hurting or helping your product's visibility.

Next time we will start digging into how to get crisp white backgrounds.

Till then! <3

Amber

Finding Your Voice in Jewelry Making

Being on Etsy or any other handmade site exposes us to the work of other designers and to trends in the marketplace.  There is a great amount of inspiration to be found here, and finding that great new thing that is happening is exhilarating.  We are driven to imitate what we see to a point, and artists of all types throughout history have imitated others in order to expand their own technique.

This is a valuable process that you can harness to find your own unique vision regardless of which art you work in. As jewelry designers, there is a somewhat standard way to work as you learn, in putting various beads, chains and findings together to create your work.

To broaden your knowledge and abilities, seek out artists on Etsy whose work you admire. Try to recreate what they've done - this is a tried and true method passed down from renaissance artists. Before an artist became a master in their own right, they worked as an apprentice to a master, duplicating the master's work and even doing some of the underpainting work for the master's finished pieces. Through this practice the understudy learned the technique well enough that when they were ready they could go and do their own unique work while drawing from what they had learned.

The key is to imitate other artists only to the point that you are learning new techniques - do not strive to replicate the work of another artisan alone, learn from many and continue to do so even after you've mastered many techniques. As you work you will be able to incorporate the lessons you've learned into your own unique style that speaks from your heart.

As always, create what you love and is beautiful to you, and never stop learning!

Amber