Can You Tell What It Is Yet?

A sneaky preview of my latest project...

I Have Been a Bit Naughty...

I have always struggled somewhat with jewellery photography. Whilst I do have a lightbox, kindly built for me by my former flatmate, it’s not ideal. Nor are my motley collection of spotlights, with their random wattage bulbs, some daylight(ish), some not.

Added to this is the fact that I’ve not a clue what an f-stop is or what it might do, so I usually end up taking around 200 shots to get a couple that are usable after much faffing around with Lightroom.

So, I have been a little bit naughty and invested in one of these lovely jewellery photography setups from Tabletop Studio:

T’was rather expensive, which means that I can’t get my roots done for the next couple of months, but I think I can probably put up with the trashy blonde look in the name of better photographs :)

And better they are! The lights are so very, very bright and the light tent diffuses them perfectly, so there’s no evil shadows.

If you compare this shot, which was the best of about 100 shots taken with my old setup, and looks like this after many hours in Lightroom...

... to this one, taken with my lovely new Tabletop Studio, and having only spent about 5 minutes on it removing some dust specks in Lightroom, the difference is definitely visible, no? The light is just more even, with no pesky shadows or reflections, and the colour of the stones really pops out.

So yes, it was definitely worth the money, and the having to deal with horrible hair for the foreseeable future.

Silver Cloud Jewellery

I have now finished turning the small pile of weather from my earlier post into actual shiny things, hurrah!

We have some tiny cloud earrings:

Tiny clouds with some rather nice sparkly blue topaz raindrops:

The boy says they are too dangly, but I likes my earrings very dangly. Perhaps I shall shorten them to a slightly more manageable length when I sell them though. They are admittedly quite long, but are definitely my new favourite earrings.

We also have a rather lovely two cloud necklace with more dangly raindrops. It's quite chunky, so has a nice weight to it and is lovely to just play with whilst wearing it.

And my favouritest bit of shiny weather, which I have worn every day since I finished it, is the cloud and sunshine. I'm calling it my rain or shine necklace. Tis reversible, see? So, if you're in a good mood, you can wear it with the sunshine obscuring the cloud:

But if you're feeling like a bit of a grouch, you can wear it the other way, so the cloud obsures the sun:And here's another couple of shots of them, as I was playing with my exciting new studio lights, more of which later...

All in all, I was super happy with the way my shiny weather turned out :) I have a proper little collection and everything. I have designed a ring to go with it, but I need to make some silver settings first, as I would want the raindrops to be slightly different. Making settings is very, very dull, so the ring may not make it's little shiny appearance for a while yet though.