A Good Day

I spent most of yesterday retaking dragonling pics. Now, a few weeks ago, when I retook pictures of a whole slew of my flower cards, I had also attempted to shoot the dragonling pins. Between the glare off the pins themselves and my lack of satisfaction with any of the backgrounds, I ended up with about 100 pictures and no progress.

So yesterday, I tackled it again--and 5 hours later-- success!!! (This is Airyn, she's currently up in the shop if you would like to see her likes and dislikes.)



I also realized something very interesting. I had been pretty disappointed with my last batch of photos and much more pleased with the set before that. I realized that the difference was the time of day I took the pictures. Now, what's odd about that is that I take all my pictures in a light box! But when it's light outside, I leave the window open and let the natural light come into the room too. Apparently, that makes enough of a difference in the quality of light to affect the quality of the photos. The lesson? ALWAYS reset the white balance before each shoot.

Now, some of you may remember how I wrote, last week, about going to the art stroll. Well, while there I found a gorgeous painting that I LOVED. However, not expecting to be buying paintings, I hadn't set aside any money and had to pass. However, my lovely Grandmother sent me a bit of birthday money right about the same time, so on Friday I called her up to see about purchasing the painting.

After a bit of a comedy of errors (I initially called the other artist at the booth), I eventually ended up at her house to pick up the painting, husband in tow. : ) We chatted for about an hour with her and her husband. She was complaining about not really having a marketplace for her works since a local restaurant (where she was selling) switched to smoking only and started bringing in a different kind of clientèle. So I told her about etsy!

I hope she signs up and it works out for her. Her works are beautiful and reasonably priced, especially considering that this one came already framed!



When we got home from picking up the painting, I found a lovely box waiting for me. What was inside? An earring display!

A few months ago, I signed up for a "Spend $30 on Paypal and we'll give you $15 back" offer from Paypal. It looked legit and I knew I would have no problem spending $30 on Paypal in 2 or 3 months. Well, last week my $15 arrived! YAY! So I went onto Ebay and bought myself a rotating earring display. Of course, I don't actually SELL earrings, but I thought it would fit my little dragonlings just right.

Turns out I should have paid more attention to the measurements, since I can only fit one dragonling per row instead of two like I was hoping BUT it does get them up off the table. It also allows me to showcase each one (people don't have to dig) and cuts down on their wandering abilities (two dragonlings somehow up and disappeared during my last show). I'm really excited to try it out at the show in a few weeks!