i art a day.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been doing a great deal of baking, trying to come up with a small collection of things – a menu if you will – of treats that I’ve got confidence in telling people I can make. Of course, it’s one thing to tell someone how great my brownies are, and quite another to show them.

The next best thing to actually eating some sweets is looking at delicious sweets. So in order to visually document my baking “line” I set up a little make-shift photo shoot – seriously low budget, and have gotten some decent results. A couple of friends have asked me how I’m putting these shots together, so here’s what’s up!

What you’ll need:

1. A camera. Any camera really. I’m using my point and shoot Nikon Coolpix that’s like 5 years old and totally user-friendly. Sure, I know how to manipulate it because I know my way around a more advanced camera, but my point is that you don’t have to go overboard here. Don’t go and buy a new camera, and don’t think you’ve got to have any special skills (unless you consider focusing a skill). A film camera will even work just as well, but be prepared to use up a lot of film and wait to get your prints back (who has that kind of patience anymore!?). $0

2. At least 1 spot light. I picked up a 150watt portable clamping flood lamp from home depot because I can clip it on to just about anything and it puts out some serious wattage. You will need a second light source to light the other side of your set-up, but consider using a floor lamp or a desk lamp that you can angle towards your set. $15

3. A large flat table. I’ve been using my dining room table (contrary to the boyf’s wishes – see above), but a desk, folding table, or counter are all fine too. Just make sure it’s wide enough to spread out a little on and high enough so you aren’t hovering above your shots. Free!

4. Backdrop paper. Actual photographer’s backdrops can be REALLY expensive (and usually very large). Unless you’re lucky enough to find someone trying to give them away on Craigslist – chances are you’ll need to settle for something cheaper. I’m using Fadeless Art Paper Rolls (24″ wide by 12′ – more than that isn’t necessary unless you think you need it) and hanging (taping) them up behind my table set up as a colorful backdrop. NOTE: while white backdrops seem like a good idea, white is a hard color to light properly and shoot, and will often turn out grey in the background or mess your light meter up. Instead, consider a color or lighter neutral backdrop to take the edge off. $2.50 each (I bought 3 for variety)

5. OPTIONAL BUT RECOMMENDED: Accent Fabric. I went to Wal-Mart and picked out a couple of fabrics with simple patterns that I knew would match my backdrop papers and would coordinate with the vibe of the foods I want to snap photos of. I bought a yard of each to cover the table I’d be setting up the photo shoot on. Each yard was about $4 each, and I picked up 3 or 4 yards, again for variety.

The Other Stuff:

- Iron & Ironing Board for making sure that accent fabric is super flat and photo ready.
- Tape (masking is good, scotch not so much) for securing the backdrop paper to the wall/bookshelf/whatever & accent fabric/paper to the table.
- Plates/glasses/silverware if you’re shooting food. If you’ve got presentable pieces then that’s great! Work with what you’ve got! You can also find cheap presentation platters at thrift stores and Ikea-type places.
- Stands/props/background objects if you’re shooting crafts & handmade goods (flat artwork is a completely different beast).

Now start taking some photos! Don’t be afraid to take 100 photos of the same thing. Switch up the angles, reorganize the set-up, switch out props and try different backgrounds. Go high, go low, zoom in and out. If you’re using a little point and shoot camera experiment with all of the different settings. Go macro and zoom way in and try out the low light settings to see if they help the final image. I take at least 50 photos every time I set something up, so keep taking pictures until you’re sure you’ve gotten at least one good photo.

Yesterday I was trying to figure out a way to send Halloween candy to my friends & family far away – without just popping it all into ziplock bags and sending it on it’s way. With a couple of things I had laying around the house I came up with these little Candy Ghosties and churned out a dozen of them while listening to the football game. Each one takes about 15 minutes to make (or less) and the materials are:

+ Sheer Fabric: I used an extra sheer nylon curtain from an Ikea pack. If you don’t have any white fabric try felt or computer paper – less flexable but still can be sewn.
+ White thread and sewing machine/needle. I stitched the entire thing on my machine, but all or part of it can be done by hand (if you don’t plan on making too many).
+ 7 or 8 pieces of candy per Ghostie. 2 for the head, 1 per arm, 3 or 4 for body & tail.
+ Markers to decorate. If you’re really into it it would be cool to try embroidering decorations on before sewing up.
+ Scissors
+ Iron
+ Pencil

Download the Ghostie Candy Bag Template to make your own!

Hope all of your plans for Halloween are frightfully fantastic!!!

Over the past week I’ve been pretty much glued to facebook, posting photos and tweeting about this project so if you know me through pretty much any social outlet you’ve seen it already. But, nothing’s official till it’s blogged about, right? I spent most of last week making geometric paper lanterns for a window design competition in Old City Philly, as part of DesignPhiladelphia. Each of the lanterns was printed with a vintage or colorful cheese label image, and constructed with a fancy-pants geometric pattern.

Each person/group was given a window to design, and I chose the Old City Cheese Shop window, because well – I love cheese! The idea started with a strand of christmas lights, then turned into travel and European photos, and emerged as cheese label lamps. Ultimately easy to make, just paper, printer, glue, Ikea hanging lamp and light bulb – it was really very Zen-like cutting folding and gluing each piece. In total I made nine lamps, but the largest ones are my favorites. 

DesignPhiladelphia runs from Oct. 7 – 13 (I think) and true to any competition, you can vote on which windows you think are the coolest! So, if you feel so inclined head over and VOTE! =)

It was nice to really get my hands dirty again. It felt a little bit like college again working late into the night and getting a board ready for a deadline, but this time I actually managed to get everything done on time and was mostly satisfied with the end result. If you’re on N. 3rd street in Philly sometime this week, go check it out and tell me what you think!

If you haven’t noticed recently, there’s still a couple of changes going down over here (if not – stop on by and take a look!), and today marked the beginning of the newest change to date. Today I finallygot the new Etsy shop and it’s partner business blog up and running - Library of Lost Things. Check them out at:

http://libraryoflostthings.etsy.com (Etsy Shop with new items to be added DAILY!)
http://libraryoflostthings.squarespace.com (The Blog!)

Recently, when I decided to make a stronger effort to update the shop with new items & ideas I wanted to give the project it’s own space. I started the i art a day blog as a place for my personal projects and experiences, which obviously includes building an online shop, but wasn’t exclusively intended for it. So from now on this lovely blog will be just that - my personal creative adventure blog, with a link or two over to the shop stuff when I’m really excited about something I’ve been working on for that. The i art a day Etsy Shop will also be phased out by the end of the month to make way for the new shop! It also couldn’t hurt to keep the shop front professional looking and my personal exploits a little more casual. To kick things off, the Secret Book Box was posted today and the new blog enabled for the public’s viewing pleasure! Yippie!

Today the 4th of 5 new books will be added to the Etsy Shop! All 5 are sturdy hardcover books filled with recycled sketch paper great for a variety of media. Two new cover patterns and a new large 8×10″ size are all here! As always, the shop can be found over at http://iartaday.etsy.com. More preview photos below!

5×7″ Hemishpheres Hardcover Notebook

8×10″ Map Hardcover Notebook

5×7″ Mixed Greens Hardcover Notebook

8×10″ & 5×7″ Mixed Greens Notebooks (comparison)

5×7″ Street Cafe Hardcover Notebook (Rome, Italy)

Owl Teapot
Watercolor

Hoot Hoot.
With the warm weather finally here to stay and changes abound, perhaps it’s watercolor season. Sure, I’ve still got plenty of oil paintings to wrap up, but a little bit of light and easy painting is in order as well. This week I’m even using acrylics for a big project (more on that later) – acrylics! Maybe I’ll find the time between painting for work, looking for more work, and travelling to sit in the park and paint some. Hooray spring/summer!

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Have a lovely week!

As I mentioned earlier I took part in a little craft show at the end of April, and I’m here to report back! It was a great time, and the smallness of the show made it a bit more comfortable than if it had been a massive ordeal. The boyfriend and I arrived around 11:40 am to set up for the noon opening, carrying the folding table, book bag full of books, suitcase, and milk crate props on the subway. Next time we’ll be taking the car. Thankfully I didn’t really have that much to set up and had already laid everything out the night before so little would be left to the imagination in the morning. We quickly set up camp and got comfortable.

I sold out of my small notebooks (2.5 x 3.5 in) within the first several hours, and will definately have to make more of them for next time. There was also a lot of interest in the medium sized books (5 x 7 in), which I make more than anything. A lot of people were looking for small books with travel themes to take with them on trips or to give as little gifts when travelling.  All of the books covered in the vintage flocked wallpaper sold, people just couldn’t help rubbing the fuzzy covers!

To attract people I also set up a raffle where I raffled off one of my medium sized sketchbooks. Overall it was a fine idea – I just need to remember not to use permanent markers next time in case someone decides to use one of the books as a writing surface. I was worried that I hadn’t made enough books for the show (which in this particular case turned out to be unnecessary because it was a pretty small deal anyway) and also threw together a little video that shows some of my bookmaking process and some of the final products:

(clicking photo will take you to the video)

Overall it was a good experience. It was great to meet a lot of the other vendors and see some of the other work. Besides the personal list of things I should make for the next show, some other things to consider for any craft show are:

1. Take a buddy. Having the boyfriend there was absolutely indispensable.
2. Take some snacks. I had a box of cheese crackers but will have to do better next time, especially since it’s a seven hour show.
3. Take something to keep your hands busy! I took a sketchbook and drew for a little while during slow periods, but that got old after about 2 hours. I also took some paper to fold for new books, but ended up folding all of it in an hour. Maybe more paper or some other little project to keep my hands busy, but my attention still on the table.

The next show will be at the end of May, so hopefully I’ll be a little wiser and more prepared. =)

A little reminder to anyone and everyone in the Philadelphia region, the craft show which I will excitedly be participating in is THIS SUNDAY!!! The deatils are:

I’m super excited about the whole deal and have been spending my days making a lot of books for the occasion! ALSO, my good friends over at Studio 27.28 will be having a tent sale on Sunday as a compliment to the Fairmount Arts Crawl that’s also taking place. Sorry for the lack of more post today – but I’ve got plenty more books to make!

Aloha. It’s nice to be back after some time away.

So what’s been going on in my little creative world? If you might recall I’ve been taking screenprinting classes (which is almost over unfortunately), and one of my friends gave me a chance to put some of the things I’ve used to work to make some t-shirts for his new little upstart landscaping business. They turned out alright:

Of course, cutting everything out by hand – yes, all of those tiny letters were hand cut – was by far the most time consuming part of the printing. The registration of the green over the black letters was the hardest part, and didn’t work out as well as I’d thought. Part of that is due to the fact that the green ink was obviously weaker over the t-shirt than the black ink. If i had printed that area with white before hand then printed the black and green it would have come out more even. But, since this was done entirely by hand with hand-cut stencils, the registration would have just about been impossible. Anyway, a couple of lessons learned and a couple of ideas developed. I’m happy to have gotten the chance to make them so I’ve got a better idea of the types of prints I can make in the future, and I’m mostly pleased with the results.

At this point it’s full steam ahead for the craft show coming up on the 26th of April! Can’t wait to fill you in as I work along =)

This week - although a quiet one – has been full of some serious thought given to this blog, the shop, the website, ideas and goals. At the moment, the most this entire thing can be is a side project, a part-time gig. Sure, I’m one of the thousands of people out there that has an idea and dreams of opening my own business one day, and getting up every morning with the enthusiasm to create something amazing. Well, I’ve got the enthusiasm down, but time and resources are just as important I’m finding out. Here’s what’s cooking:

In the shop:
1. Posted 4 new items! 3 bookmarks and one hardcover notebook. While the quantity of products is getting larger, the timing is not. All 3 bookmarks were posted Monday, and the notebook today. I’m told spacing it out a little is a good way to go, for a wider range of exposure on the site over time. Even if it’s been a little while since I’ve posted something new, I’ll have to exercise some patience with updating.

2. I purchased a spot in the Paper Goods Showcase today to generate some more traffic across my page and see just how effective it is. At this point, I’ve gotten a couple more hits than I had before, but no more hearts or sales than I started the day with it seems. I’m also thinking about purchasing a Books & Zines Showcase spot sometime next week to run a similar test and perhaps point shoppers towards some of my other categories of creations.

3. Some serious organizing has been going down. Excel has gotten a workout making Supply cost sheets that factor in price, taxes, and shipping of all of the materials I buy. I’ve also set up similar sheets that track the cost of materials + fees & shipping prices to make sure I’m selling my items for enough in the shop to break even.

4. Planning for the next set of creations has begun. This includes feasible projects, materials, time frames, and quantities. OY!

At the blog:
1. A first draft of an Editorial Calendar has been made. Basically, a plan of what I’m going to write about, and when I’m going to write it. The idea is that it’ll help minimize that blogger’s block that I get from time to time and hopefully post more often about things that are actually relevant and interesting (to me anyway)!

2. The continuous search and brainstorm about an all-inclusive and beautiful site is underway. Today I spent an extraordinary amount of time seeing just exactly what squarespace.com had to offer. More on that later.

So, with all of that in mind, I’m picking up and heading down to Virginia for the weekend to paint some walls and tackle a couple of little projects at the parents’ house. Have a great weekend everyone!!!