Tuesday Learn Something New Day - Easy Peasy Icing!

Yesterday was my birthday and I decided to make myself a cake. I hadn’t had a birthday cake in the past two years so this year, I was having one. I didn’t care that I had to make it myself, it was being made.

Matt and I found this vegan cake mix at the store the other week, it was on sale and we’re always up for trying new things so it became my birthday cake. Super easy to make, the batter tasted legit (what? We had to test it just to make sure hehe). We didn’t, however, get any icing!

What is a cake without icing? I had to whip some up real quick to top off the cake and this is the recipe I used:

One egg white

The same amount of water ~1/4 cup? Ish? Maybe?

Confectioners sugar

First, mix the egg white and water together well, then add sugar.

There is no specific amount of sugar as I'm sure you noticed....you just keep pouring until the batch is the consistency you want. If you want a ball park figure...I used a LOT. Like, more than half a bag? Not quite sure how much that is...Anyways, it was delicious but I gotta warn you, its very strong, very sugary so you really only a little, tiny, smidgen bit to top off the cake. We also added crumbled pecans that we had lying around, it was delicious :)

(see that mug? its my most favoritest mug ever!)

Tuesday Learn Something New Day - How to put your projects on Ravelry!

Oh the great wide world of Ravelry. You’ve gotten accepted, made your account and tried to learn how to use it by clicking various tabs and drooling over all the amazing projects you adding to your mental list of things to do.

But how do you show the Ravelry world your finished projects when they finally come to life? This can be a confusing aspect of the site and I’ve written this tutorial to help guide you through the process

First things first, click on the “my notebook” tab in the upper left hand corner

This should take you directly to your “projects” page. Once here click on the button that says “Add Project”

On this page fill out the title of your project, whether it is knitting, crochet, weaving or something else and where you found it (for this project, like many of my others, I choose the last bubble because I make the patterns myself). After this is filled out, click the button that says “Continue”

You will come to the Project Details page. Again, fill out as many of the blank spaces as you can, who you made it for, what size needles you used, what yarn you used and don’t forget that information in the little blue square in the upper right corner, saying that the project is complete and how much you enjoyed it :) Before continuing, don’t forget to hit “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page or you will lose all your hard work!

After saving, click on the button that says “edit photos”

From here you can choose how to upload your photos. Are they on flickr already? Photobucket? Etsy or somewhere else on the web? Or still on your computer? In this case, I used the photos on my computer.

Find the picture you want and click “upload”

After you have uploaded all the pictures you want, go ahead and click the button circled in blue “details” to go back to the previous page. If you are part of a group, add the project to the group so everyone can see it!

Now go ahead and add all those projects you have completed and show off your talent! If you'd like to be friends or see what all I have made that I haven't posted right here on my blog, you find me here. I really should update my projects too...they're not all up there yet...well, now you know what I'll be doing the rest of the evening ;)

Tuesday Learn Something New Day -How to Fix Your Photos Without Expensive Software

We’ve all seen it, we’ve probably all done it. Those dark, unclear, look-like-they’ve-been-taken-at-home-between-yelling-at-the-dog-and-making-dinner photos. And I’m sure that we all don’t have the luxury or know-how to use software like Photoshop. Here is a little tutorial for helping out those of you who have a basic photo-editing system and learning some new technology just doesn’t seem plausible (for going to a Tech school, I really don’t have much technical knowledge).

First, you have your photo.

See? Its dark, unprofessional and sloppy looking.

If at all possible, take your photos outside or close to a large window where you can get as much natural light as possible. If this isn’t possible, these tips will still help you to improve your photos.

Your computer probably has some kind of photo software already on it, I use Windows Photo Gallery for my initial editing and then perhaps move to Paint or Picnik, usually though, Windows Photo Gallery is all I need.

Open your picture in your editing software, in my case, Windows Photo Gallery. At the top of the page there is a little "Fix" icon, if you click it you will see the options on the right, including Auto Adjust, Adjust Exposure, Adjust Color, Crop Picture and Fix Red Eye.

Next, click on the "Auto Adjust" icon. This will basically lighten up your photo and make it less shadowed looking.

See the difference just that one click makes? Its amazing! And if these photos are taken during the day, with natural lighting, the difference will be even more professional looking. After this, we will probably want to crop the picture some so that we can get a full frame of the product without a whole lot of negative space. If you click on the "Crop Picture" icon a box will appear that you can stretch or shrink to fit around your product. After it is encasing exactly what you want the photo to show, click "Apply"

Here is the finished product:

These pictures were originally taken at night, in poor lighting. I highly highly recommend taking photos during the day, even if you can't take them outside. Whatever you do, no matter what time of day or night you can finally get your shots in, do NOT and I repeat, do NOT use the flash on your camera. This distorts the colors and is very difficult, if not impossible, to edit using these softwares.

Tuesday Learn Something New Day - Advertising Ideas

So for my second installment of Tuesday Learn Something New Day I have decided to list a whole bunch of ideas for pimping your shop. Please don't take these as the only suggestions, feel free to get creative and post your creative advertising methods in the comments below. These are merely meant to get you thinking of ways that may help increase traffic to your shop. Some may not work for you, some may work better than anything else you've tried. One thing I've learned is that you simply must try everything at least once to truly see if you have good results from it. So, without further ado, here is the list of suggestions :)

-Post in Etsy Forums

-Engage in Etsy chat rooms

-Project Wonderful advertisements

-Flickr

-Twitter

-Facebook

-Myspace

-Business Cards

-To friends and family

-To waiters/waitresses

-Mail in with the bills

-On bulletin boards

-In restaurants “free meal” bowls

-to random people you think might be interested in your store

-leave them in movie cases when you return them, Netflix, libraries, rental stores, etc

-leave them in library books

-Carry something with you

- if you make bags, carry one

- if you screen print T's, wear one or have your kids, SO or friends wear one

- if you make journals, use one

There are so many different ideas out there and don't ever think that just because something works for "everyone else" that it will definitely work for you as well, or just because something never works for "everyone else" that it won't work for you. Part of finding your niche in the market is finding what advertising brings your target market to your products. Now hop to it and try out some new things!