Give your shoes a new life

This is something I've been doing for a while now - pimping up old shoes and giving them new chance to live for some more years.
Easiest way is to repaint them (which I did), maybe use some glitter, ready made fabric flowers or pearls for decorating.

What you need?
* Paints suitable for leather or fabric, depending what kind of shoes you have. I use Pebeo Deco, it's suitable for all kinds of materials.
* Different brushes - thinner for the borders, bigger for the top of shoes. Small brush is good for making patterns.
* Masking tape. You may try to use it for covering the borders, so you don't have to clean them later, but it may happen that after the paint is dried, the tape can rip open some of the paint too, so be careful! It's depending a lot on the material.
* Nail polish remover, in case you have to clean the borders later.
* Acrylic vanish. Cover the shoes after painting and they look beautiful longer.

My white shoes are now purple with bronze ornaments and leather shoes lime green. Both look good. Haven't decided how to decorate green shoes, any ideas?

My photos should show before/after combination, but I painted both white shoes before I got an idea to do it. But you can see a white strap on one shoe, that's how they looked before.

Pimp up your item photos

I just read Mouse's post about how to get Etsy sales you want and got a lot of inspiration for improving my store.

Woolmint is a brand new shop, but I've been on Etsy for at least two years and I believe I have some experience, although I still have a lot to learn.

Last year my biggest goal was making eye-catching photos. If you create tiny items, it’s not such a problem, but with knits it can be rather hard to make it stand out.
Biggest thing I learned was that you don’t have to show whole product on your thumbnail photo.
But I did it for a long time.

Great example is my neck warmers. I used a mannequin for photographing them. Here's the first photo I made:

 The photo is fine, you see what you’ll get, but for reaching next level (which was getting featured in treasuries, blogs, etc) it didn’t work. Looks kind of boring, right?

So I took a neck warmer, curled it up, added some pearls, used two lamps (I took them off from wall for turning them on the way I needed) for getting good light and made a photo that features only one edge of the neck warmer.

After using it as a thumbnail photo I got more views, features and sales. I sold around 20 neck warmers before Christmas and people wanted to order more, but I just didn’t have enough time for all custom orders.

Second thing I learned was getting out from home. Natural light works best for me, if it’s not too sunny or too cloudy day.

There are so many inspiring things outside – old benches, historical buildings, green grass and blue sky. Find what’s perfect for you and make it work.
I live in apartment, I don’t have my own garden, but I often took a bag of fingerless gloves and found a place where to photograph them. Sometimes it was funny to sit on a bench and make photos of my own hand (when I didn’t have a model to use), people walking by and thinking what you’re doing. But it pays off!
Before and after:

I know people have different opinions for using real models for photographing clothing.
I’m in favor of using a model for my knits. I do have a mannequin, but if people are buying with their, eyes, they usually want to see how the garment keeps shape and so on. And for me it’s better to improve my designs if a real person is wearing it, I see details, their weak and strong sides.

I’ve never had a problem with it. I’m sure there are people who won’t buy from me because of it, but no one ever told anything about it. And I’ve sold most of my knits.
Also, my items intend to get more on the treasuries (and to FB) if they are photographed like this.
Before and after:

I know I still have a lot of work to do for getting great images. Sometimes it's hard to find time, but lets be hones: if you don't invest your skills and time into your shop, it will never pay your bills.