Felt and crochet flower brooch - experimenting with photography

 Now that my crafting corner is much more pleasant to use, I finally got to make something here. It's a brooch made of crocheted flower, an orangy-yellow ball (a circle of felt gathered around the edge and stuffed with polyester wool) and grey and blue-grey felt. 

Now to the photography. 

I've looked through all the photography books in the nearest two libraries in the past year while learning to use my DSLR, but there were no books on crafts photography. I considered buying a book, such as "Crafter's guide to taking great photos" by Heidi Adnum. The reviews on Amazon are excellent. On the other hand, I try to watch my craft-related expenses and not to make any unnecessary purchases. I might still buy the book at some point, but there is so much free information on the internet, including tutorials on how to make a light-box, advice on background  and other great photo tips.  

 I used to photograph all my creations on a plain white background (the back of the children's map of the world - it's huge!). But some of the photos on Etsy, Folksy and other handmade marketplaces, where a piece of jewellery is placed on an antique book, or a map, or a seashell look stunning. So I decided to experiment with the background. Seashells and fluffy yarn and felt didn't go well together at all.  I haven't even taken a photo, but now I think I should, just to compare.

Here I used our family heirlooms, an old Russian fairy-tale book and an old Danish book about Marie Curie:   

Not sure whether this is any better than plain white background:

This one is a bit out of focus - needs to be replaced

In the next few days (given sufficient light and time) I will photograph some of my other creations on different backgrounds and post the photos to compare how they look on the screen.

Brooches, brooches, brooches

Another family birthday is looming, now it's my husband's – tomorrow! The present is half-finished, still some work to be done. It is meant to be a surprise, so everything I can say now is that it is made of fabric and felt. It's not going to be easy to finish, since it's Sunday today, and everybody is home. I think I will enlist the childeren's help – to raise alarm if he is coming into the room. After the finished «product» is officially unveiled tomorrow morning during the celebrative breakfast (croissants, as we do for every birthday in our family), I'll post the photos here.

I've been watching Etsy Success videos while crafting, and the most frequent advice to improve the sales is to add more items to the shop. So I decided to make a stock of my most popular flower brooches: 

They are available to buy from the shop.

Still more to cut and sew. I am also trying new colour combinations: 

A month ago I had my first experience of selling at a crafts fair. It was terrifying, I was so nervous! As probably with anything that one does for the first time, it was far from a smashing success. But luckily, it was a small local crafts fair – perfect for practice, I think.  I made lots of girly brooches for that fair, and I just realized that they never made it to the blog. So here they are:

Most of them are now available from my shop.

Yesterday I asked my girls if they would like to be models for the owl and girly brooches. They were thrilled! So one day soon we'll organize a photoshoot – looking forward to that.

Brooch "Life stages"

Inspired by my previous work - the life stages of fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, a view under a microscope. A GFP-tagged and, let's say, an mCherry-tagged nuclear proteins - pick your favourites! Some dirt in the field - let's be realistic. Charcoal-grey felt, green and red seed beads and embroidery.

Large flower brooches

These were made a while ago, they now belong to my girls. Large felt flowers with a covered button in the middle, diameter 15 cm.

Dark-red "Silver deer" brooch

Silver deer is painted with acrylic paint on the dark-red background, decorated with silver embroidery and seed beads. Diameter 6 cm.

Owl brooch

 My first attempt at the felt brooches. An owl in the moonlight! Green and black felt, decorated with black opaque seed beads. Safety pin! This is a chunky brooch, 6 cm diameter, 2 cm thickness. It's very light though, so won't pull the fabric it is attached to.