How to photograph your indie crafts

lightbox01 There is a lot of talk about how to display your hand crafted items for sale. It’s important that first glance at a photo of your crafts. If your photo is too visually cluttered people can pass it by and you want to grab peoples attention and then keep it long enough for them to see your product, where they can buy it and what your name is.

For small items a lightbox is a great way to get a soft, difused, uncluttered photo that really showcases the product and not it’s surroundings. You can buy and expensive one from photography stores and you can also make one on the cheap and get great results.

there are tons of good DIY lightbox tutorials on the web and here are just a few that I have found.

Strobist has a DIY 10$ Macro Photo Studio tutorial that steps it out for you ad gets great results.

This DIY light tent tutorial from Digital Photography School looks similar.

Cheap Shooter has made a lighbox from PVC pipe.

I guess it depends on what you have lying around!

you can see peoples results in this flickr pool DIY Lightbox Addicts. OO, here is a flickr pool for other DIY photography equipment! I love the internet!

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I’m in deep denial about the fact that new year is almost upon us again! It’s been the fastest and the longest year at the same time, and I can look back and see some good things as well as some things I wish had gone differently.

Doing a year in review with your kids — whether in the classroom or at home — is a good way to capture some of their memories and the things they really liked about the year gone by.

There are a lot of different printable year in review worksheets you can use if you want to make this super easy. Here are links to a few (often part of larger posts about NYE celebrations with kids that are worth a read, too):

Teach Beside Me has lots of fun printables fro the end of the year, including a year in review that covers favorite memory, funniest memory and the best book they read, among other topics.
NurtureStore‘s version has space for a self-portrait and prompts like favorite toy, best day out this year and future dream job.
Remember favorites, their “best idea” of the year and have room for setting goals for next year with this one from The Keele Deal.
The year in review from Yes We Made This has room for drawing or writing and includes things like something they learned, a memory they made and a place they visited.

Of course you could pretty easily make your own year in review for the whole family to do that asks questions based on what you most want to remember. (Favorite video game? Best friend? Favorite family memory?)

And if after the year in review you’re ready to look ahead a bit, Mrs. Merry has new year’s resolution printables to inspired kids to look ahead and set goals for things they want to try. You can totally fill this one out as a grownup, too.

[Photo: Mrs. Merry]

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