Taking Better Product Photos

The Etsy Cloth Diaper Team centers around cloth diapering shops on Etsy. We get so excited about sharing our love for fluff that we sometimes forget we are running businesses and we need to stay on top of our market. This post is here to help those on our team and our readers that need a little pick me up in the photo department. Our photos are the first thing people see and we want them to be inviting.

First, I am not an expert. I took some photography in high school. You know back when you had to develop film. Do they still do that? I still have to go back and reshoot pictures of my own and I have tried things that work for other shops, but everytime I see them in my own I remind myself to go back and take those pictures again. But time is short and I rarely get around to it.

But I don't have a fancy camera, you say. I can't talk my husband into making me a lightbox, you lament. I promise that as long as you give yourself a little time in daylight hours you can take front page worthy pictures with a cell phone if that's what you have.

A quick lesson in Greek, the Greek word "phos" mean slight and is the base for where the English language gets "photo". Plants need light to make food, photosynthesis. The pupils in your eyes open and close with the amount of light to see, they're photosensitive. You need light to take good pictures, making photographs. I'm going to take this a little further and say the number one rule is natural light. If you learn nothing else let it be this: TURN OFF YOUR FLASH AND GO OUTSIDE. That's it; one simple rule and your pictures will stop looking like this:

Hexipuff for Beekeeper Quilt I've been working on

I know some of you are thinking that isn't so bad right? You can see the shadows so there must be light and it's pretty clear and in focus. I'm even going to say that the colors are accurate, but there is nothing about this picture that pops, nothing that says "oh what a nice hexipuff!" This picture was also taken with my higher quality digital camera. 

Experiment time! Grab the hexipuff and run outside. 

This picture was taken with my crummy cell phone. It doesn't have a zoom function or a flash. It's on it's last leg. And I'll admit the photo is not the most crisp image I've ever produced. All that said in comparison to the first picture it's a much better option if I were to have to pick on for listing in my Etsy shop. I hear you asking about that clean white background. My secret? A big white piece of poster board. I'm sure my neighbors think I'm a little nutsy when I go running outside with my recent items, camera, and poster board, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. Poster board is cheap and gives you a nice flat surface and depending on your items is usually big enough for most things. Did I mention cheap? And if your child decides to go all Vangough on it or it gets hit with last night's spaghetti dinner you feel less bad about it. Run to your shopping list and add poster board right now. I put my poster board on my porch just within the shade line, so I'm not in direct sunlight which overexposes. A cloudy day works well too. If I can't get outside I have a nook in my living room with 3 windows and it acts as a bit of a light box. If you have a good window to work with you don't even have to travel outside. 

I'm ok with a plain picture in it's natural state. If it's a little blue, this happens when I've missed my magic window and the porch is more shaded than I like, you can try to adjust the color balance in one of the many free photo editing programs online. I think even photobucket offers it now in their editing. Many will tell you to run and use Fotofuze to give your pictures that blinding white background. I've tried it. I'm not overly happy with the results. It's a personal preference, but anything changing the contrast that much is also altering the look of the item. Generally creating an overexposed look and making the item look less than life like. You want people to see your pictures as they will see the item when it arrives. Plus go look at the treasuries that make the front page on Etsy. Go ahead, I'll wait. While a few overly brighten photos make it in those treasuries usually the images that are ideal are the ones with clean natural backgrounds. 

Why does this matter? Most treasuries are built the same way shoppers search. They want to see items they can easily identify. And treasuries equate to more exposure for your shop. No matter how ridiculously cute your item is a picture with a cleaner appearance will usually win out by a treasury maker and the same is true when a batch of items comes up in a search. People are visual creatures our eyes are drawn to certain elements and features. Ask me about my 13 years of optical experience. 

So what have we learned?

1- Buy poster board

2- Turn off your flash

3- Go outside

A few things that are helpful to remember and every bit as important.

Get close and in focus. A macro option on your camera is great a good zoom is ok. 

Stabilize. When working without a flash the less your camera moves the better. Set your camera on a pile of books if you need, trust me it helps. I love my tripod! I found it still in it's original packaging at the Goodwill for cheap. Even if I had to pay retail it would be worth every penny. 

For the month of September I would like to challenge our team members to pick a few listings and try some of the ideas here and see if they aren't happier with the results. 

My Kids' Favorite Bread Recipe

Almost Wonder Bread Recipe

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Samantha

My kids like Wonder Bread. It's nutritionally worthless, so I don't buy it, but it's fluffy and hints and childhood joy. So I took my go to bread recipe and looked to see what I could change to make it more kid appealing and then did a little research on white breads.

                                     

Obviously the oats had to go, but I refused to revert to sugar in place of honey. Most of the recipes called for powdered milk, so we added that and played with the flour ratios. My first experiment didn’t have enough whole wheat to make me happy, but it was super squishy. After a few more tries I think I have a good “kid” bread recipe to fall back on when the kids get bored of the ole standby.

Ingredients (makes 2 loaves):

2 cups warm water

1 TBS yeast

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup honey

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

2/3 cup dry milk

2 cups WW flour (if you find your bread too dense reduce this by a cup and increase the all purpose flour)

4-5 cups AP flour

- Proof yeast by combining with water and letting sit for 5 minutes
- Add oil and honey
- In another bowl combine dry ingredients. I start with 4 cups of the bread flour and add the extra later.
- Mix dry ingredients with wet. If it’s still sticky add additional flour in 1/4 cup measurements. Higher humidity days will require more and dryer days will use less.
- Once combined knead for 10-15 minutes. Some breads I can just mix and go, but I find this one requires the kneading.
- Place in lightly oiled bowl and let rise until doubled, about 45 minutes
- Lightly grease bread pans
- Divide dough into pans and let rise 30-45 minutes
- Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes, until golden
- Slather top with butter while still warm

Submitted by Samantha at Turk & Bean

Pinning a Pre-fold

To Begin with:

• It's easier to use pins if you distract your baby by giving them a toy or something to keep them occupied. This helps cut down on the squirm factor and then reduces the odds that they will yank the pin out of your hand as you fasten the diaper. They will think this is funny and you will likely end up with a puncture wound. 
• If you store your pins in a bar of soap it helps decrease the grab of your pins as you pierce the diaper. You can also rub your needle on your scalp (See all those days without showering have a perk) and use the natural oils of your hair. You can see that I wrap my soap in a washcloth and fasten it with hairbands. You could tie it in a cloth bag too. 

 

How to pin a prefold  

Place your baby on your pre-fold with the back edge even with the belly button. Sometimes my pre-fold is on the long side I just fold down the back first. This helps act as a ridge in the back to prevent poo-slposions and reduces the bulk in the front.

I usually use a jelly roll fold. I love that this fold provides a barrier along the legs that make for a snug fit and help keep things contained. Take one side of your pre-fold and roll inward.

Repeat on the other side and pull up through baby’s legs.

Bring one of your wings to the center. I start with the one on my right. In order to keep a snug fit with pinning you have to pull and keep the wings tighter than you think you need to. I insert the needle from the outside and fasten with the pin head towards the middle. This makes it easier to keep the wing taught rather than pinning against the direction you’re pulling. You carefully push the pin completely through the wings and only partially into the next layer. once you have caught the inner layer push parallel to baby a few cm and then hook up coming back through the wings. You should not be able to see the pin inside the diaper. Keeping your fingers between the diaper and your baby helps keep the pin from poking your baby in the off chance that you get all the way through the diaper.

 

Repeat on the other side. You can see in the picture below that I am pulling the wing in the same direction the pin is going in and my fingers are behind the diaper.

 

Admire your work.

 

And slap on your cover.

Pinning your diapers may seem a little intimidating, but it makes for such a nice fit and you don't have to worry about a tension based fastener flying across the room. 

Written by Samantha at Turk & Bean and you can read her own blog here. 

How to Replace Elastic in a Pocket Diaper

You're chugging along enjoying your cloth diaper journey. You have a system that works, a wash routine that combats stinkies, and you smile at your little one's fluffy bum. Then one day while folding diapers or in the midst of a change you pull out a diaper and find that it's spring has sprung. Shot elastic is normal for cloth diapers that have seen lots of use. Your water, detergent, dryer, toddler pee, etc can all wreck havoc on the elastic in your diapers. There's a market for used diapers even with the elastic shot, people often like to get a deal and replace the elastic and put those babies back into action. However, if you're handy with needle and thread you can easily bring your cloth diapers back to life all on your own. You will need: thread elastic seam ripper sewing machine scissors you're handy dandy self My 4 year old has been potty trained for a while now, but he still has nights where the occasional oops happens. I'm still washing diapers for the babe in diapers, so we keep a couple pockets in the rotation for big brother. He's a lummox and we only have a few that still fit him. One of them has the elastic dying on us, so we're going to use it as our demo today. Enter our FuzziBunz perfect size pocket in Large. It's white and boring I know. The elastic is going to give out completely any day now.

First, we're going to take our seam ripper and carefully undo the stitches along the legs and the back.

Then we turn it inside out to find the elastic inside and carefully pick the stitches taking down the elastic. You may want to use a marker to note where the ends were sewn, but it should be obvious.

If you have another diaper with intact elastic you can use it to gauge your elastic length. In this case we're using 3/8" elastic; 8" long for the legs and 6" for the back. We'll sew the leg elastics back in using the old tack down points as our guide. And sewing the elastic to the seam allowance edge.

Flip your diaper back to the right side out. Now we stitch back along the lines where we ripped out the stitches. I start a couple inches back into the stitches that are still in tact, remembering to back stitch at the start. As you go down the leg you'll have to pull really tight to keep the elastic taught and be careful not to stitch your elastic in the process. Continue a couple inches into the intact stitches and back stitch to secure. Repeat on the other leg and the back elastic.

Tada your diaper is back in business!

Blogged by Samantha of Turk & Bean, also find her on Facebook and at her blog, Cornfed Crunchy.

Out of Diapers? Try a Receiving Blanket!

When I started to use cloth I heard a lot about being able to use a receiving blanket as a diaper. I had never tried this and soon forgot all about it. Well for the first time ever Little Pumpkin ran out of diapers. I had put them to wash but before bed I had forgotten to put them to dry, so while diapers were drying I had nothing to put LP in. Then I remembered the receiving blankets! I looked up how to fold a flat diaper and gave it a try, and I have to say using the receiving blanket as a diaper is great! I may try some flat diapers now.

 

I decided to share with you how to use a receiving blanket as a diaper.

 

I hope that your find this helpful! Happy cloth diapering :)