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This article is brought to you by Brown Paper Stitch, my business that makes your wardrobe pawesome by embroidering your pets on clothing.

In last week’s dis­patch, I men­tioned that I did­n’t get too much stitch­ing done. I was in prep mode for sev­er­al cus­tom projects includ­ing shirts and a patch.

 

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Embroi­der­ing a cat eye—this is my favorite part of the embroi­dery but it is also the most time con­sum­ing! #embroi­dery #cus­tom­pet­por­trait #embroi­dery­wip

A post shared by Sara Barnes (@brwnpaperbag_stitch) on Oct 5, 2020 at 6:22pm PDT

I’ve nev­er been great at work­ing on mul­ti­ple projects at once—I tend to like to fin­ish some­thing from start to fin­ish. But I’m learn­ing to jug­gle all of the cus­tom orders, although some are far­ther along (and there­fore look bet­ter with pho­tog­ra­phy) than others.

Pho­tog­ra­phy was a big focus for me last week. I cel­e­brat­ed my birth­day last month, and I used some of the mon­ey I got to upgrade my equip­ment. Seat­tle has been pret­ty sun­ny recent­ly, but The Big Dark (aka rainy sea­son) is com­ing and reli­able nat­ur­al light will no longer be an option.

My new pho­tog­ra­phy lights against the ‘plas­ter’ Repli­ca Sur­faces backdrop

I bought some pho­to lights that have a soft­box so they offer dif­fused light and shad­ows. I also treat­ed myself to a cou­ple of Repli­ca Sur­faces, which are rigid, hyper­re­al­is­tic pho­to back­drops that look like real sur­faces includ­ing plas­ter, mar­ble, shiplap, and more. I got the all-white back­drop as well as plas­ter for a bit of sub­tle tex­ture in my pho­tos. They are great! High­ly rec­om­mend if you do a lot of flat-lay style pho­tog­ra­phy because the tex­tures look so real (but each weighs only two pounds).

If you want to try pho­tograph­ing your work using arti­fi­cial light­ing, I found this tuto­r­i­al real­ly help­ful.