Ain't nobody got time to wrestle a mannequin!

One of the biggest draws in my shop are my vintage dresses.  I made the leap into selling vintage dresses back in 2008 when my Etsy shop was still fairly new and I was new to product photography and all the rest.  This week, though I've been putting it off for quite some time, I decided to re-shoot all the dresses I've had for sale in my shop now for more than five years.  I mean, in 2010 I finally bit the bullet and bought a mannequin--I'd been using a plus-sized dress form that my mom scored from a yardsale and half the time I was photographing dresses completely unzipped down the back because they just didn't fit the form.

Despite having bought the mannequin in 2010, I only re-shot the dresses I already had for sale in 2012...

I've been putting it off.  I remembered the 2012 shoot taking FOREVER because dressing and undressing the mannequin is a bear.  The 2012 shoot had my studio lights, which aren't that bright, shot at nighttime in a dark basement.

Not to mention the fact that my black backdrop was in the wrong place for the angles that I needed, so my photos from that night were terrible with half a backdrop or some awful such thing.


Now? I'm 34 weeks pregnant. Ain't nobody got time (or energy) to wrestle a mannequin!


However, if I want to get these dresses sold, the terrible pictures from 2008-9...2012... have to go. I know I don't have a good photo setup for the mannequin and clothing despite being a professional photographer. I've got pro equipment but I'm not a portrait photographer by any means, so I don't have a studio setup with legit backdrops.  I'm a photojournalist with a white tablecloth and I sold my mediocre light setup to my brother in law because it suits his videography needs far better than it ever suited my still needs.  As a result, my lighting for clothing photogaphy consists of a 40 year old overhead fluorescent light and a big ol' window.

Yikes.

So I shot 8 dresses for my Etsy shop before my body and baby were like, "LOL UR DONE IT'S NAPTIME"  and I brought my tiny photoshoot home to be edited.  Then I noticed this photo.

What the hell happened to her wig?  Where's her bottle of Jack?

And since I can't drink my sorrows away at the moment, I went straight to the Etsy forums to mention how I thought my mannequin looked like she rolled out of bed.  Because quite clearly, she did.  And my long white tablecloth idea is just not working either, I can see that.

So I'm replacing crappy five year old product photos with mediocre product photos. OK.  On the Etsy forums, someone mentioned how if I photographed her with a bottle of Jack in her hand, she would show it to all her friends, which reminded me of my past clothing photography endeavors.

Like...before I had the plus size dress form, I had a five foot plastic skeleton with a stuffed bra as such a gimmick.  I remembered selling at least one dress like that, but there were actually two sold, and so I went off in search of my bad clothing photos from way back.

And that is what this post is about-- the TERRIBLE clothing photos I started out with, and where I am still struggling today.  At least the latest round isn't nearly as cringe-worthy as some of these!

2008:

 Oh look, here's a dress hanging off my mother's porch!  Look at her shed in the background!

 OMG so like that angle wasn't good enough, here's the VFW next door and OMG LOOK AT MY SAAB!!!!

Well none of those shots worked.  Here's the money shot.  THIS DRESS SOLD WITH THIS PHOTO.

Here's another look at the dress that's been in my shop the absolute longest.  It's hard to photograph because of that pattern, which almost never looked as good as it does in person until the 2012 shoot.

 2008: Shot on a hanger tacked to the living room wall in almost direct sunlight with a Kodak DX7590, and below, shot in a basement with the same Kodak and the flash!  For the love of all that is holy...

 2009: Dress on the plus-size dress form, completely unzipped down the back since it's a US size 4.  At least this was better than say...hanging off my mom's porch.  Shot with a Canon Rebel XS in my mother's living room.  There are still quite a few of the April 2009 photo shoot images still floating around my Etsy shop, but not as the main photo.  There were some others shot in the basement in October 2009 that are also still in existence.  Honestly, I think the April 2009 was the most successful but not the best they could have been due to lighting/equipment/etc.  There were a lot of motion blur photos or just out of focus, etc, and they all got listed that way...

I had high hopes for the 2012 shoot, which went so horribly I didn't want to even tackle it again for another two years.  I couldn't even find the photos, which apparently never made it to my archive from my laptop.

And this week. 

(This shot was posted on my photography blog, found here.)

 Huge improvement, but nothing spectacular...

The search for the perfect setup continues...

It's time to revive the shop blog!

I mean, it's only been 5 years since I posted anything at all.

The best years I had on Etsy were 2008 and 2009, and I spent the morning editing old posts in this blog so that it would hopefully remain relevant if anyone wanted to see my earliest beginnings.  I stopped focusing on Etsy during mid-2010 when my photography career took off, and I spent the next two years building that. For more information, see my website: http://meganmcgory.com .

I'm up to 332 Etsy sales, 2 artfire sales, and over 100 positive feedback on eBay, and I'm hitting Etsy hard as I come up on a new period of extended-no-day-job-ness.

Not like I'm losing the post office job, I have that as long as I want it.  I left it once, I went back.  Now I'm preparing for a maternity leave and am using it as a springboard to hopefully build my Etsy store like I never did before.

In the past month, the size of the shop has tripled and I now have more listings than I ever did in 2008/09/10.

What else has changed in the past five years?

Damn near everything.

I have a new camera.  My last posts mentioned my learning process with the Canon Rebel XS I had just received the previous January.  I have all new lenses, two Canon 7D's and when I look at my product photos from 2008, frankly, I'm embarrassed. lol  Go see the part about my photography career taking off.  There's an ebb and flow to the working world now.  Maybe there always has been.

Oh, and since my blog idolizes Lunatic Sophie Saab, let's update that too.

#operationrescuesaab on Instagram.

My 1984 Saab 900 S served me well until January 2010 when it stalled in the road five times on my way home from the post office, a distance of 1/2 mile, and I pushed it home.  I parked it that day.  I couldn't afford to keep dumping money into it and mechanics were raking me over the coals. Turns out there was nothing wrong with it but a bad battery (that I had just purchased, but that happens, apparently).  And it had been parked for almost three years before I found that out.

My poor 1984 Saab.  It sat so long for nothing.  Now it has a host of many, many more problems while I was out driving all over kingdom come in my used Subarus, a 2005 Legacy, and a 2010 Forester.

 Sally Subaru, which I drove from February 1, 2010-June 30, 2011

 Rhonda the Mafia Mobile, which I drove from June 30, 2011-May 2, 2014

Meanwhile, during an ebb in my photography work, when I figured I would eventually have to sell my Forester, my loving fiance (Brent!) found me a 1993 Saab 900 S. So this is the new Saab that will be turning up in obligatory saab shots.

 This is Grumpy Sophie Saab II of Buggyshire, purchased February 19, 2013! See this Saab in still-life action on Instagram! #grumpysophiesaab2ofbuggyshire

So as it turns out, the transmission from the 1984 Saab is compatible with the 1993 Saab, so I do still have both, though the original saab is a sad saab sitting over at my future in-laws.  Brent is my only trusted mechanic, and his dad owned SEVEN Saab 900's while he was growing up, so guess what he's worked on more than he knows?

And we still go up Lantern Hill every year with my now 83-year-old grandfather. 

So what's new in my Etsy shop?  I got rid of all the half-assed crap that I thought was so special (Polymer secret beads from Feb. '08?  No one cared.) I debuted new magnets, which I made in 2009 but never listed because I wanted to make sure the glue was sturdy enough.  I GUESS AFTER 5 YEARS WE KNOW THE ANSWER.

So here they are!  Magnets -  Neon Jewels Variety Pack

And in case you were wondering, I am in fact still listing hand-made jewelry, and making more!  Here are some of my latest creations!

 Art Deco Steampunk Clock Hand Earrings with Antique Buttons

  Ruby Red Steampunk Romance Necklace

As always, I have a wide variety of crafting supplies (especially buttons!) and vintage clothes!  Check out all my links to pinterest and twitter on the side of the page, and check back soon for more regular blog posts (that hopefully won't ramble as badly as the old ones, oh hell, maybe not. haha)

Getting back into the swing just in time for spring!

I am SO READY for this winter to be over. I wanted it gone sometime after I had to work through the second snowstorm. And...if you live in New England, that was a few months ago. HA.

Anyway, on Wednesday I got a phone call from the store I had some of my clock hand earrings in consignment in. They're going out of business, and they wanted me to come down and pick up what I had left. Come to find out, the two pairs I sold in August were the ONLY pairs I ever sold in that shop. I'm glad to have the remaining eight pairs back home and just finished editing the photos of them so I can get them up in my Artfire Studio. Here's a little tease of what's going up once I measure them and get them listed sometime this weekend:

Number 94


Number 104

Well, since I was heading out to Rhode Island to pick up the remaining earrings, I couldn't pass up a trip down to my favorite sea glass beach! I found two items I've never found on a beach before, a blue glass bead and the stem from a clay pipe!

And now for something a little old, but got missed because I was so incredibly sick. On my birthday, I went a little crazy and drove all the way out to the tip of Cape Cod. I was on a strict schedule, so as soon as I got there, I had to turn right around and come back home. Leave it to me to NOT realize that I had embarked on a 320-mile round trip that was entirely pointless, but an amusing adventure.

I also got the Lowepro Slingshot 100 camera backpack for my birthday. Having two different camera cases, one for the camera, and one for the lenses, was a huge pain...and I couldn't have actually afforded this for myself so thankfully my birthday was right around the corner from when I got the Canon! I don't really know how I would ever get along without it, and I've thought that ever since I realized I can utilize it as almost a portable workspace. So here it is next to my new purse and some new orange shoes that cost $5 and some really cute socks that I got some months ago that just match this whole hot mess really well. lol.

The socks really don't make any sense (cloud & crossbones?) , but they're so cute!

Ugly new messenger bag!

I'll spare you the rest of the stuff for the next update, but I've been having a lot of fun with the Canon experimenting with night shots and the rest. :)

Anyway, over the past couple of days I've been hard at work listing new things on ebay and getting my artfire shop up to speed. Surprisingly, I had a sale on Etsy today...first time since Feb. 1! I still haven't really decided where I'm going to list the whole truckload of fabric I picked up at auction just about a month ago. I can't believe how fast time flew this month, especially after I got sick. Now my mom is sick too, but it's with something different. Hopefully it will pass soon, and we'll all be enjoying spring and not getting sick, and all that fun stuff.

Now...off to Google Analytics to see if I can actually learn anything. lol

The media says the sky is falling but I look out my window and see a beautiful day!

Renita from VintageMomCreations suggested we all take a step back from OMGfinancialcrisisDOOMDOOMDOOM and say a little bit about ourselves. My blog lately has been a bit too Etsy oriented. So...if you're just starting to read now, who am I? I'm Megan, I run Mannequin Reject Emporium on Etsy, work for the United States Postal Service on the side (read: Saturdays and Mondays and some days in between).

I like to wear crazy socks, because I haven't owned a white pair of socks since 1999. I do that on purpose, because I think white socks are boring. My obsession with crazy footwear spread to shoes instead of black and white converses in 2006. And this is my latest pair of crazy shoes, which are wicked comfy.

I go to the beach in the winter to collect sea glass and dig bottles in the summer. I make jewelry, zines, all kinds of art but two of my bigger passions are writing (since 1996) and photography (since 2002).

This is what the economy looked like the second-to-last time I went to the beach.
And this is what it looked like on my way back from Canada earlier in September.
These are a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a Dodge Viper, a Saab, and a Porsche. The Jeep was mine so I parked next to these cars (all from Ontario) to feel special. Come to find out, the 3 owners of these cars were all friends on a roadtrip through New York state ...who knows where they were going. I thought it was funny that one of them drove a Saab, because I do too.

It's a bit older. But more special. HA.

It was nice to see windmills in NY! It's about darn time the US embraces alternative energies.

I also love to explore abandoned houses.
This house in particular is one of my favorites.

Problem is, it's somewhere in New York that I've only seen 3 times in my life, because I don't go to that part of NY all that often. I first spotted it in May 1998 and took these pictures with our family camera when I was 14 (made my mother pull the car over on I-90 so I could get it.)...but as you can see, the quality was terrible because the house was so far away. I last saw it in 1999 and wondered if it was still standing today.10 years later, it's STILL THERE! I think it's a shame it's gone to waste, but it's still beautiful.

So...that's a little about me. Yes, I think the economy is just as bad as everyone else does, but I do think we all suffer from the spin the media has put on it. I love to find beauty in everything and no financial crisis will make me think the sun won't come out tomorrow or that I'll wake up on the wrong side of the grass. This winter will be cold, no doubt, but we have a roof over our heads. Maybe we'll resort to a diet of Ramen Noodles and cut out meat because we may not be able to afford it. And I picked up two free badminton rackets and a birdie, which my mom and I had a blast with last night. We don't play right (net? who cares?) but we have a great time :).

How's the zine going?

This week has been crazy. On Memorial Day I recorded a youtube video for Etsy's collection series, but I never edited and uploaded it. During the afternoon we went to see Indiana Jones...if you can imagine how excited my grandfather was to see it, check this out!

As for the movie...well....oh well. It was cool to be a part of the crowd that can be like "I REMEMBER GOING TO THE THEATER TO SEE LAST CRUSADE AND NOW IT'S SO COOL TO SEE INDY ON THE BIG SCREEN AGAIN" but the whole premise of the movie wasn't an Indy movie. More like Indiana Jones meets Ed Wood. Yikes. Though I definitely liked the part with the atomic bomb. As for Cate Blanchette, she was a lot better in Babel...if that gives you any idea. Nevertheless, it was worth it just for seeing my grandfather so happy! If you ever wanted to meet a true Indy, well, this is the guy who got me into urban exploring. Looks pretty good for 77! Can't wait to climb Lantern Hill with him this coming Father's Day.

As for the zine, I worked on it during my lunch breaks for the post office orientation this week. Got a lot of writing done, but I'm not sure I'll be able to finish up and crank this zine out by June 5. There's just so much work to be done, nevermind the fact I can't come up with a decent title or a good place to start it. I've just been writing ideas ALL week. It will come together.

So now the rest of the week: Post Office orientation! Holy Cow...here's what my schedule was like...
Tuesday: up at 5:30AM, left the house 6:15, arrived in New Haven 7:40. Left New Haven 4:00, returned home 5:30. 170 miles round trip.
Wednesday: see Tuesday. 170 miles again.
Thursday: Slept in! Awesome! Then got a phone call that I was supposed to be at Norwich PO Annex at for training at 8:30....well somewhere that call got missed. Got to Norwich 10:00, left 1:20, lunch at 2:30, headed to the Bella Earth in W. Warwick for 4:45, dropped off earrings and headed home for 6:15. Over 150 miles driven.
Friday: up at 4:45AM. Left the house 5:20, arrived in Hartford 6:15...had to be there for 7 but Hartford is funny in that if you don't beat the traffic in, you WILL be late. And if you beat the traffic, you're ridiculously early. Returned home 4PM, 102 miles round trip, promptly passed out.

Next week's schedule:
Monday: New Haven 8-12
Tuesday: Hartford 7-1
Wednesday-Friday: Putnam 8-4:30. Putnam will be the easy one (32 miles round trip, LOL).

The worst part about orientation is getting up that early and driving for an hour or more just to get to where I have to be. The good news is they'll pay me 50 cents per mile, minus the mileage between here and Norwich.

Sophie Saab needs a trip to the car doctor. Needs a new oxygen sensor, which I've known for about a month but have been putting it off because I don't know any good Saab mechanics locally, and it's going to cost a pretty penny just to fix the car. Yeah she runs. But she's eating gas because she's not well (she ranges between 20 and 26mpg, but I'd much rather see it in the 26mpg ALL THE TIME). So I'd better eat the repairs instead of putting it off and eating the gas. And she stalls on start up and backing a lot more often--yesterday some guy beeped and yelled at me because the car stalled 3 times while I was trying to back out of a parking spot and he wanted my spot. So I figure if people have road rage this bad, I better fix the car before someone shoots me through the head with a crossbow. The truth is that I don't trust any mechanics with my car. Not this one. And you wouldn't trust anyone with it either if you drove all the way to Boston just to get it!!! lol

Today is Mom's birthday...Happy Birthday MOM! Sushi for dinner tonight!

Spring's here! Get out of the house!

Remember when I said I was going to sew my socks to my steering wheel cover? Well here's the almost finished product. It's a little too sloppy at the moment but that cover is very hard to sew through, and any work I'm going to do on it from here on has to be done with the cover on the wheel. It does need some extra stitches, just to make it neat. (It's so comfy!) What else can you see in the car? 2-liter of Mt. Dew...bag for hunting sea glass and other things (I keep shovels and digging tools in it...lol)...and an Etsy order sitting there.
The Etsy order was for Number 18--the steampunk brooch I made the night before ITema laid me off. It was the first of its kind that I made so I was a little attached to it, but when I got this convo from Fyrecreek, it made it so worth it!

I wanted to let you know the broach arrived yesterday. I saw in your profile that this is the first one you made in this style. That was actually the deciding factor for me when I bought it. I had made a list of all the many things available that I liked the most, and then went through reading profiles to help make a decision on which I was going to get this time around. The Irish stamp and the cool little hand is what put this one on my list to begin with. But your profile mentioned it was your first, and I think no one's first piece should stay in the storefront for very long. Keep making them, you're very good.

Etsy has been good to me, even though I actually stepped back and took a breather from it for about a week. I need to post some new stuff tonight, actually I need to make some new stuff too. I will be moving into the last of the rooms downstairs soon so we're cleaning and re-arranging and it doesn't leave much time for jewelry making.

I've been loving the beautiful weather we've had all week. Granted, I guess we could use some rain as things have been catching on fire like crazy because everything is so dried up. For those of you who knew me in middle school (which is like ...no one who reads this blog...) the 3-story chicken coop across the street from my old house caught fire yesterday. Crazy, because 10 years ago Patrick and I were wandering around the woods over there (big bottle dump, and a "floating door"...I'll explain that some other time maybe)...and we just discovered this huge chicken coop that people were living in. Curtains and ACs in the windows.

I guess no one was living there now, as the newspaper said today that it was abandoned. Or was it?

Add this to the huge fire I saw while coming home the other night from a lovely Saturday. A huge McMansion burned about two miles from my house, and I saw it when I was driving down the hill in Wauregan (about 3 miles from the fire).


And that was my lovely Saturday. I came home and watched The Village (zip it....all of you...though I finally saw Scary Movie 4 where they make fun of it XD "Come Ezekiel, shall we have a foot race?")

Sunday's flea market day was a bit slow, so I think I'm going to bow out of there either this weekend or next (probably next weekend). I've had a great time during my 5 months there, but now I want to shift my focus, at least till the good weather is over.

Monday I went out looking for sea glass, for the first time in almost a month (because of the car problems, and now the price of gas is keeping me away as well...). I went to my two favorites and actually didn't find much. At Narragansett I found a huge bottom of a bottle or a jar, which is embossed "E.B. Co. Ld. 10710".



At Scarborough, I walked out a bit farther than normal and stumbled upon this odd concrete retaining wall, and at the back of it was a 1970's bottle dump...though everything's smashed to bits, against this wall. I found fragments which read "Liquor Bottle" and the bottom of a glass Sprite 2 liter. When I worked at Soda Warehouse (5 longggggg years ago...though pretty soon if I don't get a job I might go try going back there), someone actually thought they could get the redemption on one of those. (No, because the distributor who picks up the empties would not pick up something like that...so my boss put the bottle on his shelf along with other very old bottles people would bring back).


Total sea glass finds for the day; 158 pieces.

Tuesday was a bit of a waste...

Yesterday, after dropping off 3 boxes of magazines for recycling, I drove to Moosup so I could go for a walk in the shade. I decided to go to the place with the crystals, and when I got there I wanted to walk on the bridge (near the mill) to look at the river.

But while I was looking along the river banks, aqua shards of glass caught my eye. Now some of you can tell how badly I've been wanting to get out there and dig bottles like my mom and I used to back in 1996-1998...and when I spotted those shards I knew that might mean bottle dump. (These photos are like a reenactment...lol...the angle of the sun was different and they really popped).

So I madly went right down the riverbank, almost on my butt. It was a pretty steep incline.

There wasn't much down there that wasn't broken, and I scrambled back up the bank after about 15 minutes.

But!!!!!! I had plans to return today.

Obligatory car shot!

The fenced off remains of a building? Maybe?

So I stumbled upon this while poking around, looking for an easier way down the bank without sliding on my butt. Bottle dump..finally!
Too bad the lip on this one was busted. SAWYERS CRYSTAL BLUE INC. I took it home anyway.

Lots of plain, unembossed screw-top bottles. This dump's age varies a bit. And this bottle (below) was sitting right on top. Now I want to see one of these whole! lol

HENRY K. WAMPOLE & COMPANY. Whole. Sitting at a base of a tree.

A button!

The whole finds from yesterday & today.

The almost, but not quite whole finds from yesterday & today (that cobalt blue had me...oh..it was sitting right on the edge of the riverbank looking nice and whole...turned it over and there's a big crack. Bottles: 1 Megan: 0)

AND THE BROKEN MESS that I took home anyway.