Well, as you can tell by that picture on the left, I have been to IKEA. However, today’s post will not be about IKEA, it will be about color casting experiment that I performed.

I am sure most of you who make your own jewelry at least once came a across a piece which had too subtle of a color to be photographed successfully. When placed on a light background, such as white, color in such piece seems to disappear entirely or starts looking dirty. I had our Pink Opal Modern Geometric Necklace, which I needed to photograph for our online stores on pure white (R255G255B255) background. I tried a few of my regular tricks, but none of them seemed to work. Then I decided to try something new.

Last week we talked with my Facebook friend Aniko Kolesnikova who is a talented designer based in the UK. She was showing how she used reflectors to shine some light on darker parts of an artwork, which looks really great on solid surfaces. However, natural pink opal is a translucent stone, and shining light on it would do it no good, as light would just go through it. Instead, I decided to do a trick called color casting.  The principal is simple – transparent or translucent object placed on top of a solid color background is going to reflect this background throughout the object. I don’t know if others are doing that same thing; I came up with it myself while photographing various jewelry .

I picked a piece of paper in the shade of pink close to the one of the opal but more intense, and started experimenting!

This is how the necklace would come out being placed on a regular white background on which I photograph most of my pieces. As you can tell, this is pretty bad!

Then I placed it on my pink paper, shiny side up. You can already see an improvement in the color. But I still was not satisfied with the result.

Then I tried photographing it suspended (just from my work table lamp ) while casting color on it with the shiny side of my pink paper. While I loved marvelous glowing color, translucent pink opal started looking rather flat, as shadows and light play were removed in this position.

After that, I combined these two methods: I placed opal on the pink paper flat to have the shadows, while holding another piece of pink paper next to it to cast color on it. And I loved the result! Finally, both, color and texture were present.

Of course now I had to remove all this pink background in my graphic program (I work in Corel PhotoPaint most of the time) and add a fake reflection to the piece.

When photographing the clasp, however, I decided to use a traditional reflector, in my case – just a piece of reflective gold paper. With metal clasp reflector produced wonderful results! As you can see, on the left clasp looks much darker and less vivid than on the right, even though they both were photographed using the same exposure.

Removed the background and added a fake shadow to the clasp. On the left – without shadow, on the right – with it .

Those of you who are fans of gradient backgrounds – it can be done, too! Replace white background with desired gradient and adjust shadow transparency to be a bit darker. I have also applied Feather effect to the clasp before using the shadow – just to erase edge pixels and have it be integrated into the background more organically.

That’s it, folks, now go edit your own marvelous creations! Enjoy!

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Results of today’s photo editing – Fancy Trinkets Gold Pinwheel Birthstone Personalized Dangle Earrings. If you want to buy the earrings, you can do it here. They are US $12.00.

Images were taken in natural daylight using my beloved Canon PowerShot S95 camera and Manfrotto 055CXPRO3 tripod. There was minimal post-processing, basically only background replacement. Background is (now ) pure white (R255G255B255). I could have retouched the crystals as well, but I didn’t want to.

Earrings themselves are made using Lazer Lace™ and Swarovski crystals.

Today we got up at 6 and got all work done early. After that, we went to a park. I had a great day! With Ken, we went to the Great Falls park and had a GRAND time there! Great Falls, Virginia, is a very beautiful park, with virtually countless landscapes of all kinds – waterfalls, lakes, forests – anything you wish for . Ken took some really great pictures. In this park you can photograph squirrels, butterflies, lizards, turtles, oysters, birds, amazing big black dragonflies – fauna is about as rich as landscapes variety! I found a few lovely shells there; you know I ♥ shells. 

After that, we went to a trade center and had a dinner there at a cool place called Wasabi (Japanese cuisine) where sushi moves on the conveyor belt and you can get any you want off the belt. We call it “sushi hunt” And after that it got even better as Ken bought me many presents! It had been our fifth wedding Anniversary and I am still receiving presents. Among the presents was an iPod Shuffle, special edition (Product Red – benefits anti-AIDS campaign) in this hot red color!!! I love music, so it was a great present! Now I am trying to figure out how it works, since it is my first Apple device. It is so small, that when I first saw it I though it was a remote for a regular iPod

In front of the trade center they installed these beautiful molded plastic trees with transparent flowers, purple and clear. As much as I don’t like plastic flowers, these were really beautiful.

Now we are back home, I am sitting in my chair with a cup of chamomile tea and awesome Godiva caramels, which Ken also got for me. Oh, I do love candy! ♥ It’s really hard to lose weight when you love candy so much

Here I leave you, my dear readers and wish you to be in the same state of a happy bliss I am in now!

Au revoir!

Images: Apple.com, Godiva.com

Due to the recent national holiday there has been another massive junk food eating. As one of my family members used to joke, there are four basic food groups: Coca-Cola, potato chips, hot dogs, and ice box cakes. He joked like this until he got on the verge of diabetes. After getting close to the fence he has decided not to jump over it, gave up junk food and even lost some weight. I don’t want you, my readers, to keep eating chemicals and drinking corn juice, a.k.a. Coca-Cola, so I will be teaching you how to cook simple, fast, and extremely tasty dishes. And we will start with…

Salmon in orange juice

I only wish to catch a fish, so juicy sweet… Well, not everyone prefers to have it like Gollum – “raw” and “wriggling”, so today I will show you how to cook it the fancy (but simple) way. Salmon cooked that way has a complex, slightly sweet, and juicy taste. If you prefer a more bitter/sour taste, use pomegranate juice instead of orange.

Let’s start the cooking adventure! We will need:

Ingredients:

~ Salmon, cleaned, sliced, and frozen – 2 slices (or more if you’re really hungry!)

~ Orange juice, homemade style, with some pulp – about 2 cups

~ Sunflower oil – 3-4 tablespoons

~ Old Bay spice mix – a couple pinches

~ Tarragon leaves, dried – a couple pinches

~ Rosemary leaves, dried – a couple pinches

~ Sweet basil leaves, dried – a couple pinches

Tools:

~ Frying pan

~ Spatula

~ Scissors

~ Stove

~ Your hands

Cooking time: 20-25 minutes

Fussing, a.k.a. active working time: 10-15 minutes

Serves: 2 lucky gourmets

Let there be… fish!

Step 1.

Preheat stove to medium-high. 

Pour a couple tablespoons of sunflower oil into the frying pan.

Using scissors, take fish out of its packaging and place into the pan, face up. Put pan on the preheated stove.

Step 2.

Pour about 1 cup of orange juice into the pan, making sure to cover top of the fish slices as well.

Reduce heat to medium.

Step 3.

When fish will start boiling in orange juice and oil mix, let it do it for about 5-7 minutes, depending on the thickness of the slices. You will see your salmon turning all tender pink and soft. At this point, turn the slices over (face down) with your spatula. Pour some more orange juice on top of the fish and let it boil for another 5-7 minutes.

Step 4.

Using spatula, carefully drain virtually all liquid from the frying pan. Hold fish with the spatula to prevent it from taking a swim in your sink

Step 5.

Return pan to the stove and pour 1-2 tablespoons of oil into in, making sure that oil gets under the fish. Reduce heat to medium-low.

Step 6.

Shake your juice bottle really well, to get the pulp up. Just make sure to close it really well, too, and hold onto the cap while shaking, so you don’t have to take a juice shower Pour 1-2 teaspoons of this shaken juice on top of the fish slices.

Step 7.

Sprinkle fish slices with Old Bay, and then with herbs (tarragon, rosemary, and basil).

For those of you not familiar with who this Old Bay guy is – it is a spice mix consisting of celery salt, black and red pepper, paprika, and so on. Add a bit of herbs to the oil in which the fish is frying while you are at it. Let fish fry for 5-7 minutes. Fish at this stage is tricky and, being still slightly raw inside, might start behaving like it’s all fried and even ready to burn. Don’t buy this Just check on it systematically to prevent it from actually burning.

Step 8.

Turn tricky fish over (face up) with your spatula. Be careful when doing this, as fish at this point is very soft and can easily break/fall apart.Repeat the juice, Old Bay, and herbs sprinkling procedure, but this time don’t add herbs to the oil.

Fry for 3-5 minutes.

Serve with baby arugula leaves and fresh dill. Enjoy tender, melting-in-your mouth salmon, which like a good French wine has a complex herbal-fruit bouquet to it. This is your high gourmet time!

It is prohibited to have this exquisite fish with corn juice.

Have it with good fruit juice or with nice white wine.

And now with me repeat the mantra:

A few years ago with my Mom we wrote a few culinary books, which would sell out the first few days after they were released. In my family, most of us loves good food and loves to cook it. So I will be sharing some of our dark cooking secrets with you here, on my blog. Enjoy!

Happy Memorial Day to all of you, my lovely readers! For those of you outside of the U.S. – Memorial Day is dedicated to the ones who fought and died for their country, so that the others may live in peace and enjoy their freedom. We thank them for it and do not forget their deeds. I hope yours went well and you all have enjoyed the long weekend. With Ken, we have been busy most of it, but today still managed to go to the lovely Mount Vernon park, or as we call it, the Magic Forest . The weather was great and the day was beautiful. I took some pictures and want to share them with you.

Beautiful blooming tree near Potomac River

Flowers of the tree. They smell great!

Scroll weeds, as I call them They always grow separately from each other and make fun looking scrolls

Driftwood wreck near Potomac banks

Beautiful Mount Vernon trail

Resting place near the water. The view is wonderful and it always smells great there. The only problem is bugs – tons of them. As soon as you sit on one of these nice benches, they all start eating your legs and any other bits they can get to

Ducks bay, as we call it, place where ducks sleep at night. As it is day now, there is only one duck, all others are swimming

Lovely river flowers. You can’t pick them though – there are lots of bees and other insects!

Hearts in unexpected places. Nature turns even trash into treasures

Mmm, lovely grass on the river’s banks, so nice to sit and lay on! And to put tired feet on it, too! ♥

That’s it, thank you for walking with me, and have a great week, all of you!

Just a thought

Have you ever felt that way?..

Failures happen quite often in different areas of our lives. However, you shouldn’t live in fear expecting them (a.k.a. “preparing” yourself) every given moment, otherwise they will start happening all the time! Our Universe is very kind and always gives us what we ask Her about. If we constantly ask for failures – well, here you are! Enjoy (if you can). Besides, every failure can be turned into a shining success. I will give you a little example.

As I was working on one of my design contest entries, I decided to do what I always do (when I am in the thinking being mode:)) – to make a test piece. Test pieces allow me to experiment on a small scale, without ruining at once a lot of expensive materials. So, I made this little dog tag in my faux enamel technique. To make them durable, I always cover them with resin. When trying to open the resin bottle, I noticed that it cured around the cap and isn’t that easy to open (I use photopolymer, a.k.a. UV resin).

Lesson to myself: do not store UV resin close to the working UV lamp – it will cure even in closed bottle Of course I managed to open the bottle. Out came a huge bubble and resin spilled all over my little dog tag.

Another lesson to myself: do not open resin bottles right above your artwork!

So, seemingly, dog tag was ruined! Not so fast, my friends! I am not very prone to throw away artwork I have spent some time making . So, I gathered resin all around the pendant, formed a nice dome, rounded up spilled portion and turned it into a functional element, as you can see from the pictures. I think Eva likes wearing it . As you can see, I turned what seemed to be a failure into a design element.

Shining Sun designs were inspired by beautiful Australian sunsets and guess what – the first person to buy one was from Australia!

Designs are sold in our Amazon, eBay, and Etsy stores. Yep, we now have an Amazon store! But I will write another post on this one

I will give you another example. When I was a little girl, while walking with my friends, I stepped on a wrong stone and fell right into an old basement, house of which had been torn down long time ago. There was coiled barb wire in that basement. I fell right on this wire. My face, chest, hands, and legs turned into a bloody mess. I thought I was lucky to still have both of my eyes! Even my friends cried seeing what happened to me. But guess what – in that basement I found a hidden treasure of wonderful old coins. Maybe I paid for it with blood and pain, but I do love hidden treasures!

Not every failure is what it seems. Look at it closely, add a few tweaks – and turn it into a great success!

Let me know about your little (and big) victories in the comments below.

Australian sunset image by Christopher Prins (http://www.socwall.com/desktop-wallpaper/17291/australian-sunsets-by-christopher-prins)

If you would like to buy these bracelets from me, you can do it in my Etsy store or in my eBay store. Thank you!

Spring is a wonderful time of love, sunshine, and getting rid of long-sleeved winter clothing. These light and elegant bracelets will create a perfect compliment for short-sleeved Spring tops and dresses and decorate your lovely arms, making you look like a Spring flower.

If I told you that even an absolute beginner would be able to make such bracelet without much of the strain, would you believe me? No? Let’s try!

We will need:

Materials:

~ Swarovski Crystal beads in desired color, 8 mm – 13

~ Gold or silver plated metal beads, 5 mm – 12

~ Flower-shaped bead caps, 7 mm, for 7-9 mm beads – 26

~ Crimp bead, 2.5×1.5 mm, for 1.2 mm beading wire – 1

~ Crimp bead cover, 4-5 mm – 1

~ Beading wire, 7 strand, 0.6 mm, gold or clear – 30 cm (12”)

Tools:

~ Ruler

~ Wire cutter

~ Crimping pliers

~ Chain nose pliers

~ Bead stopper

~ Your hands (main tool!)

Let’s start the sweet process of creation!

Step 1. Measure 30 cm of beading wire and cut it off with wire cutter. Choose good quality beading wire, without kinks and twists for the shape of your bracelet to be perfect.

Step 2. Place bead stopper on one of the ends of your beading wire. This is done for preventing your great effort to be in vain, a.k.a for preventing beads from sliding off the other end while you’re stringing them.

If you haven’t gotten a bead stopper, you can use a regular clip.

Step 3. On your beading wire string:

5 mm metal bead – 7 mm bead cap – 8 mm Swarovski bead – 7 mm bead cap – 2.5 mm crimp bead – 7 mm bead cap – 8 mm Swarovski bead – 7 mm bead cap.

Step 4. After that, string remaining 11 metal beads and 11 Swarovski beads onto the beading wire, separating them by bead caps turned in the right direction

Step 5. Remove bead stopper from the beading wire end. String another end through metal bead, Swarovski bead, crimp bead, and one more Swarovski bead, not forgetting all of the bead caps (4) that you’ll meet on your way

Step 6. Using chain nose pliers, pull beading wire into a ring. Pull slowly and carefully so that you don’t damage the wire. Leave a 3-5 mm slack (exposed wire). This is done for leaving some space for your crimp bead cover. In addition, beads in the bracelet need some “breathing space” to move around the bracelet when it’s worn. Too tightly strung bracelet is fragile and can break at any time.

Poetical digression

For the next step we will need crimping pliers. If you haven’t gotten crimping pliers, you can crimp your crimp beads with chain nose pliers. However, crimp bead which has been crimped that way is less durable, and it will be harder to place a crimp cover around it. All crimping pliers have two or three grooves in their jaws. For the sake of convenience, let’s mark them as numbers 1 and 2. Grooves # 1 are used for initial crimping of a crimp bead, turning round bead into a “U” shape. Groove # 2 is used for turning this “U” into a beautiful, round, completely closed crimp bead. Secret to successful using crimp beads lies in separating beading wire ends during crimping. Both ends of beading wire inside a crimp bead should lie parallel to each other. When they are crimped, they will be separated by the largest amount of metal of a crimp bead, and connection will be durable and sturdy.

Step 7. Using groove # 1, crimp your crimp bead into a “U” shape. Round portion of the groove needs to be located on the outside of the bracelet, so it doesn’t damage bracelet’s shape.

Complete crimping using groove # 2.

For an added durability, squeeze closed crimp bead  with the tips of your chain nose pliers.

Durability test! Holding onto the opposite sides of the bracelet, pull them a few times in opposite directions. If your crimp bead hasn’t been crimped properly, bracelet will come apart. Do not get sad over it, remove morally unstable crimp bead , replace it with another, and repeat the crimping procedure. Afterwards, while dancing samba or rumba at a party, you won’t have to worry about durability of your jewelry!

Step 8. Cut off excess of beading wire, placing your wire cutter as close to the bead it’s coming out of as possible. Be careful and not cut main beading wire while doing this!

Step 9. Place crimp bead cover over the crimped (and tested!) crimp bead. Close it using your chain nose pliers. Close slowly, there are few things metal hates more than being rushed!

After closing, there will still be a small opening in the crimp bead cover. Using groove # 2 of your crimping pliers, close the cover completely.

Step 10. Put on a beautiful top, skirt/pants, complete your outfit with newly created bracelet and go for a walk, collecting admiring looks of the people. [This is Eva, our heroic model]

Swarovski beads for this bracelet can be picked to match your birthstone. Here I will even give you a table for that

And here is another table, for calculating the size of your bangle bracelet.  Bead count in this tutorial is given for a medium size bangle. If you need a smaller bracelet – reduce number of Swarovski beads by one, if you need a bigger one – add one more Swarovski bead.

♥ I wish you happy creating and a wonderful Spring mood! ♥

One day I became interested in product photography after seeing my husband’s work. Ken has been photographing products for various companies with Internet stores as a hobby (he is a lawyer). I didn’t dare to touch my husband’s equipments costing thousands of dollars , but instead got my own little camera, Canon – PowerShot S95, 10.0-Megapixel, and a tripod.

Next task was creating a photography box – light cube. For this purpose I used white fabric storage box from IKEA, as it provided the same affect at a much lower cost . After attaching an appropriate background to my box, I was in business!

My first photos weren’t the best but I did not give up. First time I only used artificial lighting. For photography lights I used regular desktop lamps in which I replaced bulbs for special daylight bulbs (with color temperature of 5,000 Kelvins), creating soft white light identical to the daylight.

After that, I started experimenting with natural lighting. Light changes its color, as it travels throughout the day, I was observing this process and writing down results of my observations. For instance, early in the morning (5-9 AM) light has reddish-blue hue. From 9 to 12 AM this hue changes to light blue. From 12 AM to 2 PM – yellowish-white. From 2 to 5 PM – perfect beautiful white light, in which I love to photograph! From 5 to 7 PM – light to deep blue, and then the night comes . These colors of course vary depending on the region and season.

Different surfaces and materials require different lighting as well. Metal jewelry is going to look horrible if photographed under direct sunlight, it requires softer light. Non-glazed ceramics, in opposite, often gain from bright light and are going to look completely flat if light is softened a lot. On this topic many books have been written, which you, of course, can all read. However, no book will be able to substitute your own observations and experiments.

One more important detail which I have noticed is correct photo cropping (framing). Photo can be as beautiful as it’s physically possible, but if it’s cluttered (too many details in the view), then it will create a feeling of untidiness and mess. Usually you don’t want to look at such photos for too long . For example, compare the two photos – non-cropped and cropped.

I have also been experimenting a lot with creating gradients (gradient effects) using solely light. Lamps placed under a certain angle at a certain distance from the object transform light into color, creating gradients. One of my photographs in this area has even won a photography award “Great Shot”, even though I have initially only created it for simply selling this pendant necklace in an online store .  

By the way, about awards. I often participate in design contests (and even manage to win some of them ). In the contests, a beautiful appropriate presentation of your work is a half of winning. Judges always first look at the pictures and only then choose works which need to be sent in for final evaluation and judging. This picture is from the latest design contest in which my company took the second place, Mejuri Enchanted Emerald. Although it is not just a photo but a combination of photo and computer design.

You can also create posters for presenting few of your works at once, I lately became interested in this, too .

Beautiful packaging attracts buyers as well and can be photographed from the top or at an angle.

To conclude, I can say that creation of good quality product photos is an important part of work on their selling for owners of Internet stores. Anyone can learn how to do it. However, you will need perseverance, persistence, creativity, and everyday practice. You can’t learn product photography by taking a couple shots a month, you have to do it every day. Product photography is like learning a foreign language – you need to practice every day. When I came to the United States, I have basically never studied English, and now I can speak and write it at an academic level and have a certificate from a U.S. university. I am not an Einstein, I have just worked on it a lot .

Be daring, experiment, write down results of your experiments – and create beautiful product photos of your lovely work!

One of our brands, Fancy Trinkets, now is sold on eBay! Fancy Trinkets is a line of beautiful affordable fashion jewelry, home decor, funky art, and gadget accessories, such as cell phone lanyards. Many lovely things are already up for sale, and yet there will be more to come. So please check them out here! All products are sold at the “Buy It Now” price with added “Best Offer” option, where you can suggest the item’s price and if we like it – it’s yours!

Fancy Trinkets was born out of whim really but suddenly became very popular with products sold on Etsy, eBay, and Russian selling platform Ярмарка. You never know, right? With prices of living constantly going up and salaries going down, there is really no middle price market, only low-end and high-end. And who said that low-end can’t be fun?! If you have a small salary, it doesn’t mean you don’t want to look too cool for school . And with that in mind, Fancy Trinkets offers SUPER affordable products with prices in the $10 – $50 range. And there is still a nice surprise for you – gift certificates!!! Now, who doesn’t love those?

So, you will receive:

♥ $1 certificate with a minimum purchase of $10

♥ $1.50 certificate with a minimum purchase of $30

♥ $2 certificate with a minimum purchase of $45

How cool is that? So, once you get yourself a Fancy Trinket, you will certainly have a lot of fun – and a lot of compliments!

All products ship in our awesome free gift packaging, and we will include a cute little card if you’re buying your Fancy Trinket as a gift.

Disclaimer: Fancy Trinkets brand is owned by my family, and I have a vested interest in promoting its products.