flamboyant green necklace

I've been experimenting with the light box in order to take shots of some of my jewellery.

This necklace is made from acrylic beads, strung on to 7 strand tigertail. This is a really eye-catching piece and not one for anyone who doesn't want to stand out in a crowd. The large beads are interspersed with glitzy 'dangles' which are individually strung and attached to the main necklace. This would look fabulous with a plain black or green plunge neckline top or dress.

click on either image to enlarge


This closeup shows the detail of the necklace:


I normally prefer to work with glass beads but, in this instance, glass would just make this particular necklace too heavy to wear. Overall I was very pleased with the finished piece. I especially like the way the acrylic appears to ripple as it reflects the light, so I would say it seems to have been a good choice of material.

For those who have been reading the saga of the light box, these shots were taken with two lights sources (one from each side) using a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6 digital camera set on macro mode. The results are more successful than earlier jewellery shots as I've managed to eliminate any peachy glow.

tweet, tweet

Ooops!! There appears to have been somewhat of a hiatus since my last post. Now, I could cop out here and blame the snow (last seen over a week ago) but that would be unfair of me.

The cause of my temporary disappearance? Well, I've kind of become sucked into the world of Twitter (www.twitter.com). To be more specific I've been trying out TweetDeck - a Twitter-friendly application - (www.tweetdeck.com) The authors of TweetDeck say that "it [TweetDeck] aims to evolve the existing functionality of Twitter by taking an abundance of information i.e twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces." So there you go. It takes a little while to get to grips with TweetDeck but it is a versatile bit of kit and is quite customisable so you feel that you can really make it your own. One of the features I like best is that you can set it to remember your Twitter login details so you directly access your Twitter account on application startup.

In the last week or so I've found a number of (UK) celebs regularly tweeting - Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, Phillip Schofield, Rob Brydon to name but a few. Its also an amazing resource to make contact with others sharing the same interests through the simple but powerful search engine.

It is also possible to post links to photos uploaded to sites such as TwitPic (www.twitpic.com) whereby you login using your Twitter account, upload your photo and your Twitter status is automatically updated with a link to the photo. All very clever stuff.

So, if you feel tempted to see what all the fuss is about, come along to my Twitter page www.twitter.com/chellebab and say 'Hi'.

tag...I'm it !

Oh-er! I've just had my first tag. Wow, wasn't really sure what to do so checked out what others have done. Once I got my head round it all (yes, I know it is really quite simple) I had a rumage through my album and came up with Clontarf Castle, Clontarf, Dublin.

It really is classed as a castle and is situated in the centre of the suburb of Clontarf about 5 miles NE of Dublin. It used to be a private, family home but is now a rather lovely 4* hotel. Had the pleasure of staying here when we visited Dublin last year and definitely recommend it.

A little known fact (well, we didn't know this) is that Bram Stoker resided in Clontarf while penning "Dracula". So our visit was very educational as well as pleasurable !!!!


Clontarf Castle at night (c) emjaydesigns 2008

OK, time for me to pass on the tag. Firstly the rules:

1.pick the 6th picture from your 6th photo folder
2.tell the story around it
3.pass it onto 6 other people

I will be tagging:

• http://craftyloo.blogspot.com/ - an incredibly talented and inspirational card designer
• http://michelebeck.blogspot.com/ - for some truly fabulous scrapbook layouts
• http://4carol.blogspot.com/ - scrapbook and ATC artist. Great blog providing detailed info on how to achieve various effects and techniques
• http://scraproom.blogspot.com/ - another very talented scrapbooker and card designer
• http://lollowe.blogspot.com/ - Mail Order Addict: sound advice on what to (and what not to) do in terms of promoting your website
• oops, I appear not to have a 6th one. Ah, well not to worry

Apologies in advance to those bloggers I have tagged - please don't feel obliged to play if you are too busy or just don't want to. Its just a fun way to get know a little more about you.

Well, that's it from me for now. Tag complete !

the (in)famous light box

So here it is (finally) a shot of the homemade light box. It is quite big - standing 58 cm tall, 54 cm wide and 36 cm deep. The fabric over the top is an old muslin square and the two sides are covered with a cut up old white shirt. The background is a piece of stiff white paper which turned out to be not quite stiff enough (see earlier post) - this issue is still to be addressed; just need to source some Bristol board as per the original construction notes.

This one is just the right size for my husband to photograph his carvings but is somewhat too big for jewellery photography. However, the design works well so I'll make a smaller version but with an open top and fabric-covered front. The reason for this is so I can shoot the items from directly above using macro-mode on my camera. I'll probably also use a perspex shelf to raise the items away from the background.


It's big, it's ugly but it is clever!

photo (c) woodwose carving 2009