May Daze - Promo Materials Instructions

Hi Quiltsy!!

For those who want to cross-promote, I have developed a set of code & instructions for you. You can then decide what promo materials you want, and add the appropriate code to your blog or web page. Here are the different elements:

1. The Promo Badge
You can add this code to get a graphic that is very similar to the first image in our video, which links to the team Quiltsy page.

2. The Promo Video
There are 5 videos to choose from. You can decide which video you want to promote with. Each video has a different set of shops and music.
Video 1: ForQuiltsSake, brenniequilts, cyndesplace, DebiDesigns, DownHomeDesigns, downthestreet, FabricsAndQuilts, cachecreekquilts
Video 2: QuiltDream, AndrusGardensQuilts, QuiltSewPieceful, RainbowDreamBabies, DownHomeDesigns
Video 3: Bonbonsandmore, ForFabricsSake,KimsCraftyApple, Kristinquilts, NeedleLove2, OriginalsbyLauren, QuiltsbyBarb, Whimbrella
Video 4a: kimbuktu, LoveBugStudios, PamelaQuilts
Video 5: AndrusGardensArt, QuiltingFrenzy, theduchesscollection, uniquelynancy, warmnfuzzies

3. The article
There is code for the finalized article - if you want it to be a blog post you just have to cut & paste the code in the HTML for the post. Alternatively you can link to the final article when it is posted here.
4. YouTube
In addition, I have a YouTube channel, LoveBugStudios, so if you would rather embed the video as a post instead of a widget, you can do that too.
5. Others
Feel free to Twitter, Squiddoo, dance, holler, whatever. You can start promoting anytime you are ready!

So... to get all this fabulous info, you need to follow these instructions:
A. Click the big picture that says "Download file." You will be taken to a site called "FileDropper."
B. In the middle of a page is a button that says "Download this File." Click it.
C. You will have to type in a word verification to make sure you are human. Type the letters shown and click "Download now."
D. You will get a pop-up window that prompts you to open or Save. Save the file to your hard drive.
E. Navigate to where you downloaded it, open the file, and follow the instructions to add the items to your sites.

FileDropper Free File Hosting

Thanks everyone!!! Please let me know if you have issues!

MAY DAZE: ACTION REQUIRED

Hi Team!!!

We found out that Storque is probably not going to publish our fabulous promotional materials, so we are going to have to do some promoting of our own. To that end, I have created several media releases for us to put in our arsenal - text, image maps, badges, and yes - even VIDEO!!!!!

In order to finalize everything, I need everyone to take action & do their part to make this a success. It shouldn't take long if everyone pitches in!

#1: The article.
Before the article gets published, I need EVERYONE to read it. It is hosted on my website right now and the link is below. Check for grammatical errors. Is it flashy enough, yet simple? Is it clear what everyone is supposed to do to participate?

What about the rules? Does everyone agree? I took a couple of liberties, but there are still holes. So if someone has the answer to the following please let me know: a) how many letters will be hidden? b) how many words are there or how many phrases? c) Some of our shops have hundreds of items. Do we want to ask folks to keep the image within the first couple of pages, or offer a hint or something to where it is? We don't want to make it too hard - there are A LOT of shops to visit!! d) are folks ok with the int'l shipping rules? (I just don't think it would be fair if one seller ended up shipping from Australia to Canada or something and have to pay that cost + the item they gave away.)

FOR PARTICIPATING SHOPS: It is vital that you CLICK your shop link, and make sure it lands on your shop. Please convo me if it doesn't or comment on this post. If your shop is not linked, it means I didn't get your promo item. While it is too late to incorporate the photo in the clickable image map at the top, if you tell me what you are giving away I will link your shop. (This is more just a way to keep track of who has done what, not a way to eliminate you from participating from the promo. I will verify participating shops with the QT leaders prior to publishing.)

Here is the link to the article:
http://lovebugstudios.com/maydaze.htm

Once the article is finalized, I will publish the HTML code so everyone can cross-post to their individual blogs/websites.

#2: The QuiltsyTeam page.
A lot of the promotional materials hinge around QuiltsyTeam.etsy.com. So I need the shop owner (sorry I forgot who) to update the profile to say "May Daze is COMING SOON!! Check back in this space for more details on our May Daze promotion May 10 - 16, 2009. Bookmark this page, and visit some of our favorite sellers while you are here!"

It doesn't need to be that exact text, but I needed someplace to drop curious people that doesn't let them in on every little detail of our promotion (i.e. this blog) and that will drive people to Etsy in the mean time too.

#3: Listing participating shops on the QuiltsyTeam page.
I have formatted the article in such a way that (whoever owns this) can copy/paste the text of the participating shops from the article into the QuiltsyTeam profile. Etsy automatically recognizes its own shop links, so once you add them to the public profile they will automatically link to the seller's shops. If you want me to strip out the bullet & the prize description, let me know & I can give you a separate list.

#4: Promo Badges
I have some images that I used in the video & in the article... if you guys want that to also be made available so you can add to your blogs or whatever, let me know via comment on this post & I will post them separately.

#5: VIDEO!
I have produced two 30-second spots that can be pushed out to Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Blogger, websites, emailed to friends, Wordpress, Facebook, etc. If you have social networking sites where you can promote our commercials, please let me know so I can provide the code to embed in your sites. I will try to add another post with the code & instructions if there is enough interest. In the mean time... please check out the videos, and turn on your audio 'cause there's music too!!!!

Video #1


Video #2

Setting Up a Mini Photo Studio on a Budget - Guest Post by Ebony @ LoveBug Studios

By now, you all should have located your owner's manual and learned how to use the 6 features I outlined in my first post. To read about those features, click here.

Today's little tutorial is a tour through my makeshift photo studio, and some information and tips on how to create your own mini photo studio on a budget.

So many of you might be thinking... when do we get to the part about actually taking the photos? Well, without the right tools & instructions on how to use the tools, your results are going to be mixed, and you may not see any improvement. Think about what you did before you got a rotary cutter & ruler. How did you ever cut a straight line? And how straight were your rotary-cut strips before you learned to fold the yardage properly & line up the grain? So that's why I am talking about the tools before we get to the actual photographing.

Design Wall / Hanging Space

My first tip is to find a place with pretty good lighting where you can hang a giant piece of white felt. I prefer felt instead of a sheet because the heavier felt drapes better, doesn't create as many shadows, and you can hang heavier items from it without creating a lot of wrinkles. The felt is also a surface that "grips" so you can sometimes just press an item up against it, smooth it out, and it will hang there without pins.

I am very fortunate to have a dedicated space where my felt hangs. Even if you just have a wall in a spare bedroom, and you have to keep taking down the felt, that is okay too! If you can set it up so that the felt bends at the floor and extends out, that is even better. You can get 72" wide craft felt at JoAnn's for around $5/yd; if you wait for a sale or use a coupon, you can get it for around $2.50/yd. You will need about 2.5 yards (to make a hanging that is 6 ft wide by 7.5 ft long). Cost: $6.25 - $12.50.

Lint Roller
A lint roller is an invaluable tool... keep one in every room where you are taking pictures or put one in your camera bag. You could even use a roll of masking tape in a pinch. Quilts are always picking up lint, and once you start taking better pictures, you don't want to replace your fuzzy pictures with fuzz on your quilts! Cost: $3.50

Light Box
I know... nothing beats the natural light of day, but when you are indoors and can't help it, when it is night time, or raining, or you just plum don't feel like getting dressed to go outside and drag all your equipment with you, nothing beats a light box. You could spend tons of money buying a light box, or you can make one practically for free.

I'm not going to go through step by step and tell you how to make one yourself, but I'll give you a link to a couple of sites that show you how at the end.

At its simplest, a light box is essentially... a box, with giant holes in it, that you put your item in & take a photo. :)

My light box was made from a moving box I had in the garage, some white tissue paper that I had from wrapping presents, and my trusty roll of masking tape. Since my box was made from items around the house, it was basically free. I also bought a couple of sheets of poster board, in white & black, to use as the backdrops. Those were $.35 each.



This is my light box with the white poster board as a backdrop. When you use the poster board, do not put a crease in it, because that will create a definite "line" in your photos. This way, when the picture is taken, you have a continuous background at all angles. My box is an 18" cube; I do have to get creative with my camera angles, but for the most part, everything in my shop is photographed in this box! Cost: $.70 + found objects

Tripod
I would have to say, aside from my light box & camera, this is the best investment I have made in my studio (and the most expensive in this tutorial.) I bought a couple of tripods for my camera - one that is a standing tripod that can be extended from 20" to 53", and another one that is flexible and can be attached to just about anything. My standing tripod was $25, and the flexible one was $14. If you can't do both, get the flexible one first. Since it is flexible it will allow you to get many angles and set the camera down on an uneven surface & still get a great shot.



Here is a picture of mine, taken inside my homemade light box! If you can't get a tripod right now, you will need to get something sturdy to set your camera on, or something you can rest your arms on while you take the photo. You would be amazed at how much vibration your camera can pick up when you think you're standing still! (I have also been known to just prop my elbows on the table that the light box is sitting on to do close-ups, so it is NOT the end of the world to not have a tripod - just makes certain things easier.) Cost: $0 - $40.

Lights
You could spend a fortune on lights... or you could just comb your house for lamps you are not using, or head out to ***mart for some cheapies. The most important thing about the lights is - make sure ALL the lamps have the SAME bulb type in it. I would say, the daylight bulbs are best, followed by CFLs, and at the very bottom would be regular incandescent bulbs. I personally like the CFLs because they don't get very hot so you can position them very close to the box without worrying about starting a fire. :) Ideally you would have 3 lamps - one for each side, plus the top, so the box is flooded with light. I only have two lamps myself & make do. I scrounged them from around the house - I have a bunch of these flexible lights that I can attach to the table.



This is a photo of my complete set up - the light box, set up on a portable cutting table; the two flexible lights (one on each side) and my standing tripod in front. These desk lamps (called "Swing Arm" I believe) run around $10 - $15 each if you buy them new. CFLs can run about $10 for a 3-pack. Cost: $30 - $40

So all told, your mini photo studio can be completely free (if you scrounge items from around the house) or run around $100 if you have to buy everything brand-spanking new. My cost fell in the middle since I had most everything laying around the house.

Here are a couple of links to instructions on how to set up your studio (I don't have any affiliation with any of the links posted):
Digital Photography School
The Strobist
Joby GORILLAPOD Flexible Tripod
Compare Prices on Swing Arm Lamps

Please let me know if this information was helpful, and in the next article, we will TAKE PHOTOS!!!

Get to Know Your Camera - Guest Post by Ebony @ LoveBug Studios

Hi All!

I promised to get this done today, and from where I sit, it is still technically Sunday! :)

This little tutorial is not meant to rehash other stuff that you can find by doing a simple Google search. If you simply typed in “digital camera basics” in Google, you would get literally millions of results. Heck, there’s even a site called digitalcamerabasics.com.

My intent here is to share what I have learned about taking pictures. As a quilter. With my 6-year old (gasp!) 3.1 megapixel, 10x zoom digital camera. If that sentence made your eyes cross, then you have come to the right place.

My goal through this series is to help you improve the pictures you take, with the equipment you have today, in the shortest time possible. I’m not a 100% expert on photography, but I’ve learned a couple of things, and invite you to learn with me!

The very first step is to get more comfortable with your camera. If the only thing you’ve ever done is turn the camera on, push a button, then turn it off… you might learn a thing or two.

Do you know where your owner’s manual is? If not, find it! If it’s not in the house, look on-line – a lot of camera manufacturers now put their manuals on-line for you to download. It’s important for you to learn a few additional settings beyond the on/off switch in order to get better pictures out of your camera.

Here are the things I want you to find out & learn to do on your own camera:

1. Can you turn off the flash? Flash photography is great for taking pictures of people, but it is death to getting accurate colors & capturing those fabulous quilty details. Learn how to turn the flash OFF.

2. Can you turn off the time/date stamp from printing on the photo? This is a great feature to store with the file, but it is quite distracting on otherwise fabulous photos. Learn how to turn this OFF.

3. Can you increase the quality of your photos in the camera? I have to get a little technical here, but I’ll try to keep it brief. Pixels are tiny, tiny “dots” of information, which make up screens like monitors, tvs, and projected images. The more pixels you can fit in the smallest space, the clearer & sharper the image becomes. Depending on how the image is to be used will determine how many pixels are necessary to get the job done. This is often interpreted as “resolution”. A megapixel is basically 1 millon pixels, so a 3.1MP camera is capable of producing an image of over 3 million pixels. That is good enough for most everything! If you have more, that’s great! If you have less, you’ll be ok, but you might want to start saving your pennies for a new camera.

• I recommend you set your camera at the best possible quality (meaning higher resolution, more megapixels – the max you camera can take, unless you’ve got one of those 10MP doohickeys. Beautiful detail – HUGE files!) Your camera probably just says “Good, Better, Best” or something to that effect. Pick the best one.

• Keep in mind also – the more pixels you have, the larger your image can be, and thus the larger your files are when you upload them to your computer. We will learn how to resize them appropriately, but if you don’t have a lot of room on your hard drive, I recommend stocking up on rewritable CDs, flash drives, or even an external HD if you can swing it. (I have tons of blank writable CDs, which means you can only burn something to it once; if you don’t have any & you need a few I’m happy to share if you cover the postage & help defray the packaging at $0.25 each.)

4. Can you take close-up pictures? I’m not talking about the zoom lens; I’m talking about the “macro” setting.

• Your camera is a fabulous piece of equipment, but it has no brains. Your brain is a fabulous piece of equipment, far exceeding the capabilities of any technology known to man. Your camera can do many things, but it has its limits! Taking close-up pictures is one of them. Don’t let the viewfinder screen fool you; all of our pictures look great on that tiny screen!
• Here is a little experiment. Grab a business card – any one will do. Hold that card in your hand at arm’s length. Put on your glasses if you have to. Can you read it? Yes/no? Bring it in about halfway. Can you read it? Give your eyes a second to adjust. Now, set the business card on the end of your nose. Can you read it? I’ll bet it’s pretty fuzzy! Well, that’s exactly what you are doing to your camera when you turn it on “auto” and shove it at the quilt to take a close up! That little experiment is your lesson in a thing called “focal length.” Without going into the gory details, the simple explanation is the distance your camera needs to be from an object in order for it to focus. The macro setting on your camera (it may just be referred to as “close up” or have an image of a tulip or other flower) is how you can change the focal length of the camera lens so it can get closer. (My camera recommends it for use within 2 feet of an object.) Learn how to find this setting, and how to turn it ON and OFF.

5. Does your camera have a white balance feature? “White balance” is simply a term used to refer to the type of lighting and how it impacts the color white. Sunlight is by far the best type of lighting for interpreting colors, but when you’re driven inside, you need to be able to compensate for the lighting inside your house. This is used typically in conjunction with the flash OFF. You may have to experiment too with the settings - there’s usually a daylight setting, an incandescent/halogen setting, and one for fluorescent lights. Learn how to adjust this between the different settings. In my camera, it stays set unless I change the dial or turn the camera off, so it’s something you might have to adjust frequently!

6. Does your camera have a self timer? The digital cameras can detect the very slightest vibration… even when you think you are holding perfectly still! Using the self timer can substitute for the lack of a tripod or flat surface (more about that later.) Incidentally, it can also help you when you need to model something and there is no one around (remember my blue & green belt? YUP!) Learn how to use the self timer and turn it ON and OFF.

That’s it! Those are my top 6 camera settings, and I use each of them almost every time I set up to take a picture. So take a half hour or so, sit down with your camera, and learn about how to use each feature on your camera!

Please let me know if you found this useful. If you have any trouble, feel free to convo me on Etsy or leave a comment on this post. The next post in the series will be about setting up a mini photo studio of your very own!