Make a Light Box in 5 Minutes, and Easily Store It

Make your light box in 5 minutes, or as long as it takes your boyfriend to cook you scrambled eggs. Seriously. I just did it and wasn't even able to finish my morning coffee. Inspired by my trip to the Etsy Labs,  I put one together in a jiffy. Here's how:

Materials for Making Your Light Box for Product Pictures with White Backgrounds

• 4 pieces of foam core. The size is up to you on how big you want your light box. Get a plastic bag to carry it home in if you can.
• Strong tape. Could be clear packing tape or masking tape. Just as long as it will stick. White or clear is best in case it affects light creeping through the cracks of the foam core.
• Scissors, in case you need to cut the tape.

How to Make Your Light Box

• Put two pieces of foam core together in an "L" shape, or 90 degree angle. Tape the back of it. This is so that when you fold it up to store it, you will fold it backwards. Repeat with the third piece of foam core to the other side of the now center board.

• Do not tape the base down to the three boards. By leaving the base of the light box empty, this will make your light box portable or easy to store.

• Place the 4th piece of foam core into the center of the three pieces. Viola! You have a light box! The convenient aspect about my light box is that it is front of windows, so it gets natural light. See below for the difference between different light sources (natural and light bulb).

How to Store This Light Box

• Remove the base by sliding or lifting it out.
• Fold the foam core backwards on top of each other.
• Put the base on the pile of foam core.
• Slip into a plastic bag (ideal to use what they gave you at the store).
• Done! Slip it behind the couch and you're done.

How to Take a Product Picture in Your 5 Minute Light Box

• Use a digital camera (or film, your call) that lets you adjust your aperture and focal point. If you are using a digital camera, click the button to open the shutter and watch the screen for what the product will look like, then take the picture. You'll have to hold still if there is not a lot of light and you need to open the shutter very wide for half a second or longer. Below is a picture of a wide shutter with lots natural light coming from the windows behind the light box. See how it has no shadow. You could display the product like this, or use Photoshop to cut around the photo and remove all of the background. The product would look like this.
  

Best Digital Camera for Taking Product Pictures

I love my Cannon A610 PowerShot. It's manual, has a long battery life, 5 mega pixel, is true to the light when you shoot on manual, the Auto setting is great, you can direct what to focus it on so that the background is blurry (but I don't know how to do that) the flash is not so bad but you don't need it much thanks to the manual setting, and it shoots great movies. I just don't know how to compress them! Here's a detail picture of embroidered fabric. Scroll down to see the embroidered flower on the dress.

Happy product picting!

Working for the Woman!

And the woman is me! Me me me!

Katie James, LLC is very busy, so I've not had a minute to post, and am becoming quite a night owl. Before my first day hit on March 1st, I was up until about 3am for a week designing a website. Whew! Now that I'm a free bird, who can go to bed when I like, it's very easy to stay up all hours! I haven't done pay-per-view yet, because I'm on the computer trying to get things done. You'd think I'd have all of this free time to wash Gerdy, do laundry, post to FashionMista, but no! I have a long list! And here it is, a list of things to do for girls who quite their day jobs and break out on their dream jobs:

What to Do When You Quit Your Day Job

1. Get centered. Get a facial. You need to cleanse of your old life to prepare for your new. (check)

2. Get a pedicure. You might as well (check. i did this while i was overbooked and had to sketch a microscope, so i did it while getting a peppermint leg rub).

3. Get health insurance. I'm going to do it through the Freelancers Union. I had it through them 3 years ago, but for only one month because then I got a day job with health insurance. Now I can join as a company. I'll post as I learn more. (to-do still)

4. Roll over the 401K at TIAA Cref I was graciously able to save while at day job, and turn it into an IRA to be used as desperate backup liquid cash, that will be taxed. This may have a time limit, so I better hop to it. This is good to do because if your money stays in the 401K, you can't contribute much to it, and it's basically no fun. I'm no accountant, but the word is to move it out of the 401K, unless you are switching jobs. But that's not what this list is for. (to-do still, but need to hurry)

5. Get laser printer!! Can't live without the speed of a hot little laser printer. My favorite is the hp laserjet 1300 that I had at the office. So reliable and so fast. (done! got from craigslist from a grad student! i recommend a used one from Amazon - if you get from this link I get a tiny commission...).



6. Get QuickBooks!! So excited for this one. I actually got it already from Amazon. It was the cheapest price I found for Macs. Next step is to take it out of the box. QuickBooks will let me put all of my income into specific categories, so that I can see what is generating the most money (thanks, daisyhead!). Think it also has an inventory function, so that I can track things via inventory, which also is supposed to make my expensing easier at tax time, so that I do not expense something like fabric that was turned into a product and sold. (to-do still)


Ok, on with the to-do list!!

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Need a Handyman? Call BoyfriendForHire.com

Lately, it seems like people around me need a handyman. I know I did, but I have a super. And a boyfriend. But the boyfriend has his own ways of cleaning the bathroom and other highlights, that I need a man with another set of tools to do the heavy hanging. Not THAT kind of hanging! Gross. A fellow Mista used him, and here is her testimony on when he put up her shelves.

www.boyfriendforhire.com

For record, David did put up those other shelves, so I didn't need to call boyfriendforhire.com.

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How to Make a Light Box for Product Shots

So simple. Thanks to Kathy at fofolle, we can make light boxes with white boards and clip lights. No more shots in the white of my bathroom in the morning.



For my camera man brother who is reading this: perhaps you can help me construct this in exchange for my 'lending' to you the Adobe Creative Suite...

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Techie Nerd Site for Tutorials - Lynda.com

Hey People:
My brother turned me onto this site. I was emailing my techie nerd friends with it, when I realized there might be other secret techie nerds out there who could benefit from a website that offers gobs of online tutorials to teach you how to do techie nerd things like make animated gifs in Photoshop.

It's Lynda.com, and my brother is in love with it, and I really like it to after it affirmed how to make an animated gif (my younger cousin was the first to teach me).

Here's the first real animated gif I made for ReelInvitations.com:


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