Once again, another winning title!

I'm a member of a facebook group for local crafters and the subject of photographing stock came up and it inspired me to take some photos of how I prepare my stock for sale so that I can share it with you. I only photograph small items this way, you could use it for jewellery, supplies, smaller items but I guess the principle is the same for larger items.

I use a cheap point and shoot camera, my windowsill (any time of the day and weather) and PicMonkey for editing. This is really not that hard.

Note:  I've edited my photos to look brighter, it really was a dull day!

Here's my set up.

yes, we're moving...I'm sure you knew that by now though ;)

I pull my voile back from the window, pull my curtain out of the way, lay a piece of fabric down (cord this time because I couldn't be bothered to iron my white cotton) and that's my set up done. As you can see it was a gloomy day, mid afternoon, raining and I didn't even bother to move my big scraps bin. (This is the bin I have for pieces too small to be considered worth keeping. It's mostly thread cuttings if I'm honest, it's hard to part with scraps!)

I bought my tripod for 69p from B&M but it's the first time I've used a tripod, usually I hold my camera. I just wanted to try it out. For 69p it's great quality!



I use either macro or super macro depending on the item, I use auto white balance (there are people unsubscribing from my feed now..auto?!), no flash and I have it on shaky hand setting. I can never seem to get them not blurred when I don't use shaky hand!

Never, ever, ever, ever use flash. Especially if you are photographing metal or gems, natural light is always better, even on a dull day.

Here's my photo straight out of the camera. I resized it but didn't edit it at all. Not bad, but could be enhanced.


 I used PicMonkey to 'auto' adjust the exposure and resized to 800px on the longest size. That's it. Two clicks. Go to exposure, click auto adjust. Go to resize, resize to 800px on the longest size (it will work out the other as long as you've got keep proportions ticked) then save. Job done.


Next I sort my triglides and rings out into size and colour piles. I stock silver nickel, antique brass and gunmetal in sizes 1", 1.25", 1.5" and 2". I've also tried some triglides for thicker straps in 1.5" this time, but I'm not so keen on those. My originals look so slick!


Each buckle comes in a plastic bag, ten buckles in another plastic bag. I open them all out, make sure I've got enough to make up a set and then bag them up in sets.


Oh the wasted plastic!


I use glassine bags and washi tape to package my strap kits in. Each bag has one triglide slider buckle and one rectangular ring. I have spare rectangular rings which are bagged separately. I use a different colour washi tape for each colour metal I have and I store them in boxes in size order.

As you can see from this photo I appear to have over-ordered on the gunmetal 1.5" sets this time. They're my favourite though it's hard to find matching magnetic snaps.

Oh yeah, and if you want to see them in the shop, click the 'My Etsy Store' tab on my top bar.