The best main thumbnail photos I’ve seen in a while on Etsy are by the seller Above All Fabric. They sell, well, fabric of course. So the owner could easily show us squares of the goods, but for the main photo, they cropped out a circle “mask” (photo editing term). It’s so alluring, I marked the shop a favorite and had to write about it!

This technique may not work for most other sellers, but it’s an example that helps urge all of us to think of creative ways to display our items. What could you do with yours that would work for everything you make and/or sell?

And I do have a tip for this seller. Add more photos to the item pages, and leave them square or rectangle. I think we all like to see as much as possible, and this includes every bit of the fabric until it repeats.

This is a recap of this afternoon’s photography lab on color theory at Etsy’s Virtual Labs.

First of all, whether you visited the lab or not, we all need to review (and probably save to our hard drives for the future) a color wheel image..

There are six major ways to use this color wheel when taking photographs of your items for selling…

1. Monochromatic or Tone-on-Tone

You could take a bright blue item, and place it atop a dark or muted blue item, like so:

CONTINUED…

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

More from Etsy, with their growing database of content and activity areas, there’s so much to learn all the time. Did you know there’s a fashion trend report every month?

After this article, we’ll scout our own INs, but this morning is about giving a nod to writer, daniellexo, as we just start out on our own.

This month, as Etsy reports, it’s the capelets and extra-long knit scarves. Personally I’m already looking ahead to Spring, but this is based on what’s saturating (and possibly selling) on Etsy right now.

Here are my picks from those two styles…

They’ve stolen my thunder! LOL…

Etsy.com just rearranged their many “community” sections into one intro page under the same title. Gone is the link to “Forums” in the top menu (which had me and surely many other Etsians worried!), and once clicked one sees another menu to reach many a user’s fave hangout.

What catches my eye as never seen before is the Virtual Labs section with online classes! That really sounds rockin’. There’s lots there, and maybe lots you’ve never noticed before (I wish they’d introduce their “ways to shop” better, too), so go on and check it out!

As a happy, loving member of Etsy, I still haven’t dived into the Storque enough yet. But as I start this website, I should follow everything handmade. What did catch my eye (and my “heart”) was an article about slightly more jaded Valentine’s products (being sold on the site of course).

Read the piece (well, mostly view the items) through this link.

And may I take a moment to ooh and ahh over this endlessly wire-wrapped heart? The wire it must have taken! LOL. And the work of course. Check out the seller’s shop here.