My Photography 'Corner'

Some of you may know that I currently live in a tiny one bedroom apartment and space is always a constraint. It takes a lot of organizing and 'clever' storage to keep everything in place. 

My craft table doubles (or triple) as well, my crafting area, my photography corner and our dining table. And so far, that's how it's working for us... well, until we move to a bigger apartment (soon! *fingers crossed*)

This is how I stage my photo-taking. Behind me is Ryan's play area.. haha.. and I have to squat in that small area to take my pictures, which is fine and having to clear the table constantly is a good thing for me too. I do try to clear my table after I use it each time anyway :)

See how I just prop up the patterned paper as the background. I change my 'background' to suit the cards I make. I try to use colors that will make the cards stand out and so far this has worked out well for me.

I usually use Photoshop to tweak the exposure, brightness, vibrance and color balance after I take my pictures because we don't have much natural light flowing into my space. The next place we move to, big windows is one of our requirements.. haha.

Hope you enjoyed this little sharing and little peek into my apartment :)

Blog banner

Some ideas has been playing around in my mind to design a new blog banner... I changed it a couple of weeks back and then I decided I wanted to change it again. This time, I am finally satisfied with the results (let's hope for a longer period of time.. haha)

The cabochon flowers are from Studio Calico's kit... I love them but somehow always fail to integrate them into my layouts. Perhaps I will attach them to a frame or something. Will have to think about it more... 

I have changed the name of my little 'business' from "Angelicquirk" to "Evelin T designs" on my Facebook page (the url has been changed too). I will proceed to change it here on blogspot as well. Am still thinking of the best way to do it... should I just change the name here on the original blog or create a new blog and direct people there? What do you think?

I also made a little custom stamp for the new name :) I do hope this new name will be a whole lot easier for people to remember (fingers crossed!). 

Angelicquirk was a fun name and I was published in a number of local (Malaysian) magazines, however I wanted my little crafting business to meld into something more professional and I think a name change was in place.

We will offer custom and ready made journals & albums, scrapbooking, mini albums, altered shadow boxes and photography as well as some new ventures on the way (to be announced soon).

Maybe one day, Angelicquirk will emerge again under the umbrella of "Evelin T designs"... who knows?

Eve

Title-less....

It's so hard to come up with a title for my posts most of the time. I blog about so many random things in one post that I sometimes am not sure what to title it :) So, I hope you can understand why today's post is 'title-less'.

I was experimenting with photo-taking indoors for my Etsy shop these two days. I don't have the luxury of a big window with very bright sunlight shining in now... so I have to improvise. Oh, it is very sunny outside here in LA, it's just not shining into my apartment... haha. 

I caught the right lighting yesterday but I decided I didn't like the background and tried to take pictures of my products again today... then I discovered (finally), why my product pictures aren't showing in the shop as how I wanted them to!! But Mr. Sun has left the 'building', figuratively.... cos he's still out shining bright just now... the light just wasn't streaming in through the window anymore. 

There has been a lot of trial and error but I have finally got it! I just need to wait for tomorrow to come to continue my photo-taking endeavors :) 

I can't wait for all the photos to turn out how I want them to.. haha... it's so easy to use instagram or some other apps but not for the shop. I have to represent the product in its actuality as accurately as possible.

Anyway, if you made it thus far reading about my adventure in photographing my notebooks and badges, here's a layout I would like to share with you! :) Actually, I think I completed this last month .. I am so slow in posting them up. I have a lot more backlogged now :P

I am having a lot of fun creating layouts now. 12x12 layouts used to be very daunting to me and I never really made any back in Malaysia, however, once I started, it seems more do-able now :) I am getting the hang of it. I created some 8.5x11 layouts too... will share them soon.

Eve

*click*

I wouldn't say that I have a trigger-happy finger but I really do love taking pictures. I have bought quite a few cameras these last couple of years since I caught the shutter-bug but my favorites so far is my Nikon D90 and my iPhone 4s. The former, obviously because it takes way better pictures but the latter  because is so lightweight and it's all-in-one (phone, camera, games, etc). It's really helpful when you wanna take good pictures but don't want to lug a dslr around :)

For my recent trip to Melbourne, I decided to travel light and was only equipped with my iPhone 4s. In fact, the photos in the last couple of blog posts are all taken with it too. To say it for a fact, I am impressed with the camera function... it is w-a-y better than my old iPhone (the first gen) and the iPad... :)

I love the paint-peeling off the wall kinda effect on this patterned paper... it's awesomely vintage :)

And I do have a thing for turquoise.. I love that colour, somehow.

I have not done a 3 photo layout before. This is my first time doing one. The doilies have been inked as I wanted it to have a bit of colour as opposed to being stark-white against the background. As you can see, I love inking the sides of all the papers... 

This trip to Melbourne was awesome. I met with my aunt & uncle who went to visit and accompany my grandma back, spent time with my grandma, cousins and aunt & uncle who hosted us :) It was a very family-close-to-heart-kinda trip :)

Quirky