The Joys of Photography

It takes a lot of work to photograph all those Jewelry Making Ideas I have for you at eebeads.com, but it's a lot of fun too. Years ago we used to just lay the jewelry on a scanner and scan away, but not anymore. Scanning is a very easy (not to mention inexpensive) way to get pictures of your jewelry up on the web, but I was picky and wanted more.

After a lot of investment in time and money Allen (hubby and co-owner of eebeads.com) figured it all out and what you see today is the results. It also didn't hurt that my brother is a professional photographer. He lives 800 miles away, but through the miracle of email, he helped us get where we are today. The only problem is little Ms. Picky (aka me) wanted more than Allen had the patience for. "Can you move it a little to the left? Can you try it at a different angle? Could you move the light to the right?" He's patient, but there's only so much he can take. So I took over and we've all been happy now. Yep, I take all the photos that appear on our site. I know a lot of our competitors have multiple photographers, but we can't afford that and I'd probably be miserable anyway.

The trickiest things have always been the earrings. We tried laying them down flat and shooting from above, but some earrings just wouldn't cooperate. A perfect example is the angel breast cancer awareness ribbon earrings that I'm putting up this week. As you can see, there's no way those little angels and ribbons would have laid flat properly. In came Allen. He made the little "stage" you see above to shoot earrings and I think it's just perfect! Let me know what you think by sending me an email to blog@eebeads.com or leave a comment below.

Crystal Glue-In Charms

The last time I asked you why something wasn't selling (the Psychedelic Tye-Dye Beads) you gave me some good feedback by the way of comments and email so it's time to ask you again.

On Friday I put up a new line of Crystal Glue-In Charms that you can customize by gluing any color of crystal flat back you want. I thought they were just about the neatest thing I've seen in a long time and got 10 different designs (not all shown here) and 8 colors of sparkling flat backs. Running a scan on what sold this weekend, it wasn't these little guys, and my other confusion is a lot of the folks who did buy the charms didn't buy the flat backs.

So...why aren't they selling? You all made it perfectly clear to me via comments and emails back in July that Hot Fix Crystals were a bad idea, but these aren't glued to clothing, they're stuck to these adorable little charms. Or did I pick bad designs (there were others to choose from)? Take a look at the Crystal Glue-In Charms and please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below or sending me an email to blog@eebeads.com

By the way, for whatever odd reason, the Psychedelic Tye Dye Beads started selling about a month after they were up...who knows why! :)

Out of Stocks?

I had so many wonderful comments left here and suggestions via email about the last post (the red X in our shopping cart has been replaced with a more subtle purple trash can by the way) that I decided to submit another question for you that Allen and I need help with...out of stock items.

What a bunch of our competitors do is remove an item from their site completely if it's out of stock. In our site redesign we could do that and that's where we're stuck. The picture shows what an item at eebeads.com looks like right now if it's out of stock. The best part (we think) is you can sign up to be notified when an item is back in stock. Would you rather not see the item at all or do you like it the way it is?

The other problem is the Inspirational Jewelry Making Ideas we have up. Here's an example: November's Jewel Necklace If we had simply removed the out of stock items, and you clicked the "Add All Above to My Cart" button, you'd only get the items we had in stock and probably not even realize you didn't order the complete idea. Again, which way do you think is better?

Ponder our dilemma and leave a comment below or email me at blog@eebeads.com
Can't wait to hear what YOU think!