Wlydhare's Hollow

Win a Halloween Glitter House!

In honor of my Etsy shop opening this month, I am going to be doing a random drawing to give away a handmade Halloween glitter house, like the one for sale in my shop! It even comes with a battery operated flicker candle (with replaceable batteries!)  to go inside and give it that spooky look at night!

The windows are lined with yellow tissue paper to allow the light to shine from within and the roof, door and window frames are decorated with fine black glitter. Ghosts, bats, a black cat and tombstones accent the house. The house is about 3-1/2 inches tall at the peak of the roof.

I will conduct a drawing on Monday, October 5, 2009, of all the people who leave a comment to this blog between now and midnight October 4, 2009, PST. Please be sure to include an e-mail so I can contact you if you win.

And, if you would like to see some other goodies I have for sale, please visit my Etsy site at

http://wyldhare.etsy.com

Good luck!!

Giveaway

I am going to be posting this weekend about a special give-away I will be holding on my blog. Stay tuned to learn what you can win!

Here is a hint of what you might win:

Fun with Photos

Well I knew there would be some bumps in the road when I started my Etsy store, but I didn't think in would be in the area of photos. While I am not the best photographer in the world, I had thought I at least had sufficient ability to come up with some acceptable photos for the site.

I suppose knowing that a sale, or even getting someone to click on an item to just look at it, hinged on the quality of the thumbnail photo they found at my site. Take that pressure and add my obsessive compulsive nature and you have the perfect formula for many hours of frustration with a digital camera.

First I tried to just set up shots in my work room, against a drape of fabric. This seemed to work okay for larger items but my necklaces just didn't show up right. The background didn't look white, they were too dark, the shadows were not behaving and even several hours playing with them in a photo editor could not get the colors to look like a proper representation of the design.

So then I got a photo cube and lighting to try to see if a more professional set up would help, but I continued to have the same problems with the background looking anything but white. *arghh*

I then thought that perhaps using my bunny Lily (made by the very talented Lollihop) to model the necklaces might be cool and a bit different, but tie into my studio name. But when I ran it by other people, everyone agreed Lily was adorable, but confusing as to what exactly was for sale. K.I.S.S. - Keep it simple stupid! Well no one was that blunt, but that was the bottom line.

Okay, plan C, or is it D now? Someone suggested scrap booking paper as a background, but I still thought the pictured needed something else to it, that didn't distract from what was being sold. Then at 3 am it came to me, something nature-like: river rocks, a tree branch, something along those lines. So today I went on a hunt and found a wonderful branch out in the firewood pile! Woohoo! I draped a necklace over it and I really liked how it looked! But there was still the problem of the background.

A soft beige was too light and washed out.

A sandy background was too much and took away from the necklace and sort of made it all run together in shades of brown.

Then, much like Goldilocks, I finally found one that was just right!

My stubborn OCD brain is happy and I was able to post a bunch of new necklaces! Yeah! Now I just need to go back to the previously posted necklaces and "upgrade" their photos.

Law and Disorder

Not that long ago, I was bragging about how I repainted the  pegboard in my craft room and how great it looks. I still think it looks great, don't get me wrong, but so many people commented on Flickr about how neat and organized I was, I thought I should set the record straight! Yes, the pegboard is bright, colorful and organized, but I can't say that for the rest of the room. Here is the view from the doorway:

If you look carefully, you can see a bit of the pegboard on the left wall, closest to the wall. See it? See that blue? Okay, if you can't, don't worry, it hardly shows. *grin*

But I have a good excuse for the chaos, it has been very busy at Wyldhare studios working on new things for my Etsy shop. Have I introduced you to Lily, the Studio head? Lily is short for Waterlily and often is accompanied by Nessie, her dragon floatie.

So what is up and coming? Well it looks like some more peg dolls may soon be ready for the shop.

She has also been working on some new pendant designs, including a few for Halloween, but is refusing to share right now. She said she wants it to be a surprise!

However, I did catch her working on some new ideas, but I am not sure exactly what she has in mind. I guess I will have to wait and see!

Grand Opening!

Today is the official opening of my new Etsy store, where I will selling some of the things I make. For those who are not familiar with Etsy, it is a site for independent artists to sell their work, art supplies and vintage items.

My primary theme will be vintage inspired items, although I will be adding some more contemporary and fun necklaces and who knows what else. Hopefully it will not be too much of an eclectic combination of things. I do love vintage, but I also enjoy fun and silly things.

Anyhow, if you are interested in checking out the store, go to:

http://wyldhare.etsy.com

Have a great day!

Snarky Teenagers

 

My older daughter, who has been a teenager all of three days now, announced in the ccar today that "Mom doesn't have or do a job."

When I pointed out that I had been working very hard, since losing my job in June, to try to make a living as an artist, she responded with "Well sitting in your craft room with glitter and paper isn't really a job."

Arghh! I told her it hurt, and that beyond the creative things I did, I took care of her laundry, the cleaning, packing her lunches for school, being her taxi driver, etc. And again, all I got was "Well yeah, but that isn't really a job."

Is it possible for a mother and daughter to survive the teen years together?

It really hurt and still does, especially when I am trying so hard to make an income in economic times that I have so little control over.

*End of Rant*

Craft Room Makeover

As I mentioned in my last post, I am working on a bit of a makeover in my craft area. I found my color inspiration from a really cute vintage toffee tin from England.

 The sides of the can are really cute as well:

 

 

So I took the can into Lowes and said ,"This is the color I want my paint to be!" And, as you can see, by the bits of pegboard showing in the first photo, they did a pretty darn good job of matching the color. Here is how it turned out:

 

In other news, I really enjoyed participating in a fun "Block Party" that Elizabeth of Creative Breathing held in honor of her 300th post on her blog. She asked people to send her a 5" x 5" block for her to use, along with other blocks to make a banner. In return, she sent each contributor a block she made.

Here is the block I sent her. Unfortunately, the photos came up a little flat in the photo, despite my attempts to tease them out with my graphic editing software:

 

And here is the beautiful block she sent back:

 

I met Creative Breathing through Flickr and then found her blog from there. It really has been wonderful finding so many creative people through Flickr and blogs and they give me so much inspiration!