Yesterday Ling-Yen of Ling-Yen Designs.com stopped by on her walk between showers. She was good enough to come in to look at the new things I was working on and of all the pearl people earrings, she liked this set the best. So I am putting these aside with the thought of maybe entering them into another contest. I feel, after looking over the winners in the Swarovski contest that winners are picked, not always by the innovative design, but by the number of products used in the piece. At least everything in this work came from FM.

I do not know if it was a reaction to finding out about my win in the Fire Mountain contest or the fact that I was photographing pieces for the Etsy thing, but yesterday was my day to see little examples of bad workmanship. Instead of skimming over them, or just planning to sell them for less, I sat down and redid each one. That is the good thing about beads. A snip of the scissors or wire cuter and you get a second chance at doing something right.

I spent a long time on Etsy, loved watched the newest posted items! trying to figure out the best way to photograph my stuff to make it look interesting. This was yesterday's slightly out of focus attempt. I had the big Sony set on a tripod and when I got frustrated with it, I grabbed up the new point-and-shoot Canon and got the best photo of all. If the sun comes out I now see what I can do to improve this.
I have moments when I wonder if I will every get anything posted on Etsy. Ling-Yen was very encouraging but she gives her work over to a professional photographer!