DIY tutorial how to make ear wires

Today Albina from AroundBeads shares her little secret how to make ear wires on your own and to save a little bit money on your jewelry making supplies.

If you love making earrings, you always need earring wires, right?
You can purchase commercial ones almost at any craft store or on-line. There is a little bit of math... An average price for 1 pair of sterling silver hook ear wires is nearly $1.20, the average price of 22 ga sterling silver wire is around $2.00 per foot. To make 1 pair of earwires you will need 3"- 4" which is around $0.50- $0.65. Do you see the difference? One more advantage is the fun you'll have making them :)

OK, let's start! It's easy as 1-2-3!

Secrets of Photoshop – How to make the background more brightly

Not all of us are good photographs and not all of us have a light box and a good photo camera, that’s why the photos come in shaded completely or from one corner. I want to show you how can correct such photos. It is not always possible to apply, but only for photos with a solid white or grey background. In any case you should try and take experience for the future.

In this article are used Adobe Photoshop Cs3 Extended English

1. Take the photo.

2. Open Image -˃ Adjustments -˃ Curves (or press Ctrl+M). It’s opens a window. Gently raise the diagonal curve. More you raise it the image becomes brighter. Don’t do it too much, otherwise with the background becomes lighter the object too.

3. That's what we got. The background is still not enough light, and the object seems too dark. But if again raise the curve, the black dots on the beads turn grey and we will lose details in the shadows.

4. Therefore we do the following. Open Image -˃ Adjustments -˃ Brightness/Contrast. Opens a window where you can move two sliders. Move it just a little on right and you will see how the image becomes even lighter, but the black dots remain black.

5. That's what we got.

6. If it's necessary, you can adjust the size of the image with the tool Crop.

7. At the bottom of the photo the background still remains dark, so we take the tool Brush, choose a large brush with a diffuse edge.

8. Make a transparency about 15-30% and the white colour. Now you have to draw with a brush the background for first time and then the places witch needs 1-2 times more.

9. That's what we got at the end.

10. There is a slightly different way. Take the tool Polygonal Lasso and put points around to the object point by point.

11. Than open Select -˃ Modify -˃ Feather selection (or press Alt+Ctrl+D). It’s opens a window to control the blur of the selection. The higher number you set - so to a greater number of pixels selection blur.

12. Then repeat the operation 2-4.