I wanted to share with you my new toys in the art room. Just about every year I get myself a great gift at Christmas time. It takes the pressure off of my husband to produce. LOL. One year he did buy me a car for Christmas and that was pretty spectacular. Anyway back to this year. Just this week I realized that I am going to have more time to work on my blog.

Is there anything that will make it easier for streamlining the blog process? You probably don’t realize what it takes to write a simple post. First you have the idea. Then you write about it. Don’t forget about the pictures making sure the pictures are sized right. If they are aren’t, it takes forever to load into your computer. Those pesky pictures. Some bloggers use their phones for the pictures but I use my tablet because it is a bigger screen to see things through. As I have been aging some of these tasks are getting harder. Like holding my arms up to take the pictures for extended periods of time, How about taking the picture and then realizing nothing is straight or it is blurry because my hands were wiggling that day. What would make that easier? Here is what I came up with…..

How about a tripod and bracket to attach my 10″ tablet? I went to Best Buy and ordered this great tablet bracket by Joby. They were out of stock. Not to worry the nice sales guy ordered it from his phone and then he suggested I come back to pick out the tripod that actually would work with my bracket. It came overnight to my house, which is amazing here in Shoshone. The next day I went back to Best Buy and found the tripod that worked with my bracket.

It was easy to attach and isn’t permanent. You can remove you tablet at anytime for other applications. It took me a little bit of effort to understand how to adjust everything. It doesn’t help when you aren’t very coordinated like I am.

Here is another cool thing to have on hand. A small level for the top to help with all the adjusting. I set this on the top of tablet to make sure the camera is straight.

I think you can get a small one in the tool department of a hardware store.

Here is how it looks when you are getting ready to take a picture. What I found was helpful was to turn the camera on and then straighten the picture on the wall to the camera. You already have your camera level so it comes out perfect that way. All you have to do is push the picture button. It is fantastic!

The cool thing about this tripod is that it can be used for taking pictures on your table. Because it has several adjustment you can lay it flat and take pictures straight down. For me this is fantastic because I can take pics of my work in progress without moving my art creation back and forth from the table to the art design wall. I believe it will be easier to take pictures of all the detail that continues to change in my art pieces. Lastly it will be a big help with explaining the process thru the blog posts.

How do you get those pictures into your computer you ask? Well you take Pat’s advice and buy a cord specifically made for that. It connects to your tablet and then into a usb port on you computer. You could probably use the cord from your charger if it comes out of the charger box. I chose not to because I need my charger cord to be just for charging. It was easier for me to buy a separate one for downloading. I leave it connected to my computer because I take a lot of pictures. After the pictures are in my computer I use Adobe Photoshop to adjust and resize them.

If you look at the pictures from “A Natural Christmas” blog post I took all of those pictures using these cool tools.

Hopefully this will be helpful for your future art adventures….Enjoy