The Mannequin’s Earrings!

As I mentioned last week, I’ve just started working with a jewelry mannequin to take  my photos. As thrilled as I am with how it all comes together, I gotta ask one simple question:

Do the people who design these things ever talk to the people who use them??

Not Quite Right...!

Take a look at this – I’m just trying to put an earring in. Nothing fancy… just a regular earwire. The mannequin has a hole in the ear, and the description specifically mentions that it’s for earrings, so I know I’m not doing anything wrong.

She's a Hard Headed Woman!!

Now this just doesn’t make sense – you have a hole for the earring, and yet… you can’t actually put most earring on! Probably a post earring would work, but give me a break! It would have been soooooo easy for the designer to make a slight adjustment to accommodate a majority of the earrings. The ear could have been made a bit thinner, or the area behind the ear could have been sculpted deeper, so that the wires wouldn’t hit. To me, if they would have tested this with peopl who actually use it, they would know that it needs to be changed a little.

The Fix...

So in order to use it, the earwires need to be bent and reshaped every time , and that’s unacceptable! So l have come up with a solution… not the greatest, but it’s the best fix I can think of – I now have a slightly shorter, and different curved earwire “permanently” stuck in the ear. Instead of manipulating the earwires on my earrings, I gently remove the hanging part, and put it on the mannequin’s earwire for the photo, then put it back on the real earwire when I’m done. This works for most of my earrings… but my designs with long soldered earwires will never get photographed on the mannequin!

I love how this looks, but the designer should have put the head in beta test!!

Dramatic Photo… Amateur Set-up!

Over the past year, I’ve improved my photo taking abilities alot – I look back at some old pictures, and the difference I see is really obvious. The one thing I just never got was taking photos on models.. Now I know it’s important – it helps folks see the size of an item, and it shows how a piece lays. But I never felt comfortable about using real people. So I recently bought a jewelry mannequin, and I just love how my new photos are coming out!

Pink Ice and Crystals

I think this looks so cool…. of course, I love my jewelry (Simple Pink Crystal Earrings, Triple Crystal Necklace, and Pink Ice Crocheted Necklace), but I am so impressed with the dramatic look I got! But I am NOT a photographer…. I am a jewelry designer, and creating a professional shooting location is not something I can do now.

So I am going to embarrass myself and show you all the “great” set-up I finally created, which gives me such dramatic shots!

The Photo Set-up!

Lucky for me, I have great light in my bedroom, from the window on the left…. But I had a problem, since all my surface areas were against the walls, making it impossible to shoot with the light behind me (I close the curtains with the light behind me, which gives me diffused, but bright lighting). So, my TV has become my photo shoot stand!

Adding the Dramatic Black Background

I had a piece of heavy black board from years ago, and I just stand it up behind the mannequin – it’s a bit of a balancing act, but it works for me! I make sure to turn the TV (the stand is on casters) so that the light hits the surface straight on, which reduces the shadows and keeps the color bright.

Three Strands

I am so thrilled – the colors look so true on the white, and the whole thing just pops against the black, and I don’t even have to do any adjusting to the photos… Who would have guessed that I could get this result while balancing the mannequin on top of my TV?!

It Seemed Like A Good Idea When I Bought It!

I love interacting with customers, so you’d think that craft shows would be a great venue for me. But as much as I enjoy talking with people at the shows, I discovered that I really hate the process of setting up and tearing down a booth space, so I do very few of them. But I am always on the prowl for different displays that could work.

A few years back I found a great one from a store that was going out of business – I think it was originally used to display watches. It has locking doors, it turns, it holds alot of jewelry, and it looks good.

My Original Display Case

So here’s the display, loaded up with some of my earrings … looks good, right? But in my narrow minded focus, I sorta forgot a few things – like it is HEAVY. Not a little heavy, but real HEAVY. And BIG – not just tall, but wide too. And AWKWARD – the turntable on the bottom has to be taped down before you try to lift it, of it will swing around. And did I mention HEAVY?

I don’t know what I was thinking… this is NOT a good display case for craft shows! I can barely get it in/out of my car. And it takes up alot of space on the table. And when the show is done, and I gotta lift it back into the car, I am tempted to just leave it at the curb, anything so I don’t have to lift it (did I say it’s it HEAVY!?). I’ve since bought a couple of lightweight earring displays, and decided it’s time to sell this big boy on Craigs List…

But really… I thought it was a good idea when I bought it!