Quiet House

These little rug rats are both off on their first full days at school today, and the house is very quiet.  This is the first time since Ellery was born that I am staring down the barrel of a full child free day, and I am feeling a little crippled by the openness of it.  Looks like I should have made a plan for myself yesterday.  Maybe a shower is a good place to start.  Then a to do list.

So I guess the baby-moon is over.  It's been a little challenging pushing back the wall of work that is waiting for me in my studio, so now I guess I can start chipping away at it.  It is a little daunting. Thanks so much to all of my lovely and patient customers for allowing me this time and space with my boys, but now it appears to be time to get back to it in earnest.

But wow is it quiet, and I'm missing these little faces. . .

Ellery and the Baby Gym

We are doing well here.  Insanely busy, what with now balancing the needs of two (mostly) sweet kiddos with the demands of business with work.  Happily people have been ordering lots of jewelry, so we are having to figure out how to balance everything right off the bat.  

Ellery is now almost 3 months old, and starting to do things.  Intentionally, I mean.  He is reaching for things, using his hands a little, and making lots of great new baby sounds.  And he is as fat as a house, and very cute.

Spring weather has finally arrived here, followed in about three hours by the black flies.  Ah, life in Vermont!  And things are getting going in the garden, which is very exciting.

I'm sorry about the lack of posts.  It is hard to find the time, although I do miss it!  I do a lot more on Instagram these days, so if you want to keep up with what is going on around here, both creatively and with the little family please find me over there.

xo

Out of the Tunnel

 Have you ever been so busy that you don't have a spare second to do anything but trudge forward, tackling one deadline at a time, moving from putting out one fire to the next?  That's how December was for me, and I am just now finally coming out of it.  And looking back at it now I realize that I had a kind of tunnel vision for the whole month, and my senses shut out everything non-essential. I know that this is a fundamental side effect of stress and anxiety, that the brain filters out and sets aside everything except essential information. But I have never consciously been aware of the phenomenon in myself before, and I only just realized how complete it had been yesterday as I was hanging out in the bathroom with Emmett as he was playing in the tub. I finally felt like my eyes were open again to seeing, I mean really seeing, and also appreciating the world around me, and the beauty in small things.  And everything in my sight sorted itself into little snapshots of things that I never would have even seen a month ago, let alone seen their texture and their beauty.

I suppose this type of tunnel vision is a pretty neat survival instinct, but I must say that it is nice to be out of the tunnel.

Some of My Favorite New Work Created For and Tested By The Gauntlet of This Season's Craft Shows!

My busy season of traveling for craft shows has finally come to a close, which is a good thing because I am getting way too round for that sort of thing!  One of the best things about doing craft shows though, aside from getting to talk to so many lovely customers face to face, is the chance to put new designs out into the world and be able to gauge customer reactions to them right away.  At the end of the season I take stock of those reactions and then I come home and take photos of the most popular items and put them online in my web shop, for the rest of the world to see.  Here is a selection of some of the new designs that became this season's favorites, and have made it up in the shop!  And there are lots lots more, so if you haven't checked out the shop in a while now would be a great time to take a peek at what's new!

For more details and pricing about any of these pieces please click here to go to the Rebecca Haas Jewelry online store. Also, if you'd like to see regular images of new designs coming out of the studio follow Rebecca Haas Jewelry on Facebook or Instagram, both are fun ways to keep in touch through pictures. I just love Instagram. And if you do head on over to my Facebook page you'll be able to find a pretty great coupon code to use in the online shop for all of December. . . just sayin'. . .

Favorites From The Winter 2013-2014 Lookbook Shoot

Featured pieces:

Bones Wrap Necklace

Ovum Rings

Elizabeth Necklace

Bent Perch Cuff

Deco Cuff

Chevron Stacking Rings

Archer Stacking Rings

Additional pieces will be added to my website shortly. If you are interested in something you don't see listed please feel free to get in touch with me. 

Model: Aili Sage RL

The Elusive White Background

As a jeweler, and I bet this happens to all types of crafters, I am often asked for photos of my work on a white background.  But as an amateur photographer this is often one of the hardest types of shot to achieve.  The white never looks white in the picture, even if to the naked eye the set up looks clearly white.  It always looks grey, or pink, or yellow, and often the surface isn't uniform, with lots of shadows and just generally other troubles.  So for years I have been trying to figure out how to do this.  And I need to do it at home, without a professionally lit studio and thousands of dollars of equipment.  So I have scoured the internet looking for clues and cobbled together a set up.  And if you want to start doing the same the Etsy Blog is a great place to start reading.  

So let me give you a heads up that my photo set up is really nothing to look at.  It is almost hilariously low budget.  So much so that last time I was taking photos I thought that the set up itself, nestled around strewn toys and and Ikea tent in our playroom, really needed immortalizing.   So let me first show you one of the photos I took in the middle of that mess so you won't close this window without reading any further.

 Not too bad, right?  Ok, so here is the set up.  Note the mostly eaten bag of jelly beans in the right hand side of the top photo.  These white background photos were fueled primarily by jelly beans.

 Ok, so what you want is bright, but diffused natural light and a seamless background.  So I found the sunniest spot in our house, which happens to be the playroom.  I placed some clean white poster board on a table and propped it up on that kiddo bench so that it made a gentle arc up from horizontal to vertical. Then to diffuse the sun I taped up some white tissue paper, which lets through most of the light but eliminates sharp shadows.

Doesn't that look nice?  Of course I don't have any unused tissue, so this came from a recent online purchase.  I'm very eco-conscious.  Yeah, that's it.

 It is also very helpful to have a tripod so that you can open up the aperture on your camera to let in the most possible amount of light before the item itself gets too washed out.   The sun had moved a bit by the time I took pictures of the set up, so originally the sun was directly on the poster board without any bright or dark spots.  Here are a few of the other pieces I shot that day.  I have had to play with them a little in Photoshop, but there is only so much you can do in Photoshop, so you really need to start out with an original photo that is pretty close to how you want it to look in the end.

Although I am absolutely no expert I am happy to answer questions if you have any.  Just leave them in the comments or get in touch directly through one of the contact options on the right.  And to see more jewelry photos you can head over to my website, or to see collage product shots you can head over to my Etsy shop here.  Happy shooting!

Caught Up

Phew! What a weekend.  Pretty sure that working all weekend is not the intended purpose of Labor Day Weekend, but sometimes that's the way it goes.  But there sure are going to be a lot of check marks on my to-do list once I get back from the post office!

80th Sunapee Summer Fair in Instagrams

For those of you who have never been, this is a truly amazing fair.  It is 9 days long, for starters, with 2 full days of set up.  Each vendor is judged on the quality of his or her booth, so there is a lot of pressure to have a set up that is really professional and sleek.  So the experience for the shoppers is very high end, like walking around through hundreds of tiny craft galleries.  We had wonderful weather, traffic was steady, and I managed to somehow finagle help from friends or family on every day but one, so the days just flew by.  All in all it was a fantastic experience.  Exhausting, but really great.

I saw lots of familiar faces from last year, which was really nice, and also lots and lots of new faces.  I was again so impressed and amazed at how many families have been shopping at this fair for generations, and have made a family tradition out of it.  They look forward to visiting the same artists from year to year and picking up a new piece each year.  And there was a jeweler in a booth across from me who was participating in his 41st Sunapee Summer Fair.  His daughter was behind the counter helping him, and he told me she was in a playpen during his first fair.  And her sons were there with her, so there were sometimes three generations in the booth at the same time.  I felt a little as though I was looking at the ghost of my Christmas future, and tried imagining Emmett being at the show with me at age 40 with his children in tow.  Almost made me feel like my life was flashing before my eyes.  There is something pretty amazing about joining an organization for life.  It gives one a real sense of permanence and continuity, which is really rare in this day and age. 

This was my second year, and from a booth design point of view I think I learned a lot this year.  There is a true art to putting together a sophisticated booth that doesn't actually take 2 full days and a couple of carpenters to put together.  It is all smoke and mirrors people!  So I have a few good ideas about how to simplify things for next year.  And I really need one that I can modify to fit all of my craft shows, some of which are indoors and can't accommodate 8 foot high walls!  So these old booth walls from these photos have probably seen their last show.  My next goal for booth design is to not only limit the time it takes to set up, but also the amount of lugging.  Note the giant U-Haul truck below.  Yikes. 

Sorry that basically all of the photos are taken from inside my booth.  I'm afraid that on this blog you get to see what I see, and that's where I spent 95% of my time.   You'll have to take my word for it that there was lots of other really cool stuff going on.  But luckily I was so busy I didn't have a chance to play around the fair with my  camera in tow, so it was just Instagrams from my booth for me this year.  I'm not complaining.  And thanks so much to everyone who made it to the fair this year! We all really appreciate your support!

League of NH Craftsmen Summer Fair Starts This Weekend!

Tomorrow is the first day of set up for the annual League of New Hampshire Craftsmen Summer Fair.  The show opens to the public on Saturday August 3rd and runs through Sunday the 12th.  If you have never been to this event before it is really worth a trip.  Not only is there tent after tent full of booth after booth of amazing handmade crafts for sale, but there are lots of interesting demonstrations, classes and other hands on events all day long.  There is food too, and places to sit down, relax and take a little breather.  You can follow the link above for additional show information.

I'll be set up in Tent 7, booth #704.  I have been playing around with my display a little bit, and have added some fun natural texture to hopefully help highlight the jewelry.  But most importantly I have made an obscene amount of jewelry!  And many of the pieces are one of a kind new designs, which I can't wait to get everyone's reaction to.  I also added more 14k pieces, since the price of gold has helpfully gone down so much since last year, as well as some pretty stones that I have been hoarding in my studio for the past several years.  Here is a little preview of some of the new work:

I really hope to see some of you there!  And if you read this post and decide to make the trip, just mention this post for 15% off your entire purchase! (at my booth only, sorry, can't offer discounts for the rest of the show!)

Behind the Scenes: The Shoot For The Rebecca Haas Jewelry Fall Lookbook

From the shoot for the 2013 Fall Lookbook:

model: Aili Sage
hair and makeup: Aili Sage
shot at: The Pear Tree, Chester, VT

Around The Studio

Things have been busy here in the Rebecca Haas Jewelry studio.  I usually count on a little downtime at the end of winter to spend some time regrouping and focusing on the big picture.  I didn't really get that downtime this year, which is both a blessing and a curse.  So aside from the new website I didn't really get a chance to tackle any big projects, and am woefully behind on stocking up for the may shows I'll be doing through the summer and fall.  Just thinking about it makes me start to hyperventilate a little bit.  Eeeep!

Here are a few photos I've taken around the studio in the last few days.  The photo above is a little collection of photo props, along with the macro lens which I use for my jewelry product shots.  The second one is of the newly listed Geometry Bangles, and the bottom ones are my little computer desk and a stack of chalkboard painted display boards from last year's show season.