Happy New Year to you all. Hope 2023 will be good for us all.
Ive been going through my shop trying to make it look better in the hope of getting picked as a ‘folksy favourite’ to drive sales perhaps as the one and only time I got on the front page I had several sales from it and lots more traffic to my page.
My question is should my main image fill the square as opposed to what I do now with leaving a border around the actual artwork frame? Ive spent ages looking at other shops and really can’t put my finger on what works best as some shops use the fill the square with the artwork and others leave a bit of space around the artwork.
If anyone wouldn’t mind taking a look at my shop and let me know what your thoughts are I’d be very grateful. x
If you look at this screen shot of some items in your shop, you can see that the 2 on the left have fallen foul of the folksy crop - bits of the item have been trimmed off when the image is cropped to square and the result isn’t very professional looking. So I think you either need to leave a larger border such that the entire piece of art work is still shown when it is cropped to square or crop it in closer so the entire painting fills the square image (which for non square paintings would mean that part of the image doesn’t get shown on the shop front but would get shown if someone clicks on the listing)
Thank you Sasha, really appreciate your taking the time to help out, that’s kind of what I was thinking but I’m not sure how to make the image fit the square crop? I’ll go and fiddle with my original photos and see what I can do.
Taken from folksy’s current favourites…
The painting in the middle isn’t actually square, its landscape format but the design can cope with the left and right sides being trimmed off when displayed as a square. Would that work for any of your landscape format pieces?
Thanks again Sasha, Ive had a little play about with the landscape images and cropped to square as best I can for the main image, now I’m thinking I maybe should do the same for all of the paintings so I lose the border and it looks the same throughout the paintings?
I’m not personally bothered if a photo doesn’t fit the square, but with artwork I do want to see a close up of the work, and perhaps a colour scheme that fits that particular piece. By this I mean your art hanging on a wall with complimentary decor. This can be done very easily using something like photoshop. It’s a technique I use a lot. I check out Pinterest a lot for photography inspiration.
Thank you, really appreciate your input.
I’m utterly rubbish with tech stuff, I wouldn’t even know where to start with photoshop, I struggle to do much more than crop a photo to be honest.
I would photograph my work on my own wall that would fit with my mainly sea colours colour scheme but the my light is completely wrong, or do you mean props too like a blue wall with maybe sea coloured furnishings?
As for Pinterest, nope, can’t figure that out either.
I sometimes think that I should just give up my shop but the stubborn part of me says ‘don’t you dare quit’ 
You mentioned you’ve had an item on the front page before, I’m not sure which this was, but if it was a Folksy Favourite and not just from something like Theme of the Day, then look at the thumbnail to see if you can see any differences between this and your other photos.
I don’t think it’s important whether the main image fills the square or has space at the edge - as long as it still looks good from the square thumbnail view and hasn’t cropped weirdly. That often means a full image of the art, or if it’s got background and isn’t a square piece, with a bit more background to the edges (for a tall painting you need more background to the sides, for a wide painting more above and below).
The thumbnails of yours that currently stand out to me the most are these:
The items seem well placed - central with nothing important cropped off, and the images (apart from the last one) are fairly bright. Some of your photo just seem a little dark. You mention you’re not good with tech stuff, but it might be good to just look at some basics of photo editing, as sometimes brightening your photos a little after taking them can make a massive difference
Have you already got anything you use for photo editing/cropping? There are so many different programs/apps/sites and they all work a little differently, so if you’re not good with tech, it can help to know exactly what you’re using, as someone might be able to give a few simple step by step instructions specific to that program that might help.
This is Folksy’s blog post about the sorts of things they look for (and avoid) when selecting items to feature - How to be featured on Folksy
(also, when it mentions borders in the “things that put us off”, that means intentional borders that have been edited on, rather than how you’re using it here to describe a bit of background showing).
Thank you so much Kim,
Yes the one item that was ‘folksy favourited’ was one of my Christmas cards (I’ve removed it from sale now as no longer Christmas), it was laid out and photographed and cropped exactly the same as many of my cards including the blue one that you’ve screenshot above, I don’t bother with the ‘theme of the day’ very often as not many of my items fit the themes.
The only edits I do are cropping from my phones editing thing. I have just had a mooch around it and found ‘brightness’ so may spend some time playing with that, thank you, I completely agree that some of my images are dark but because I think I’m rubbish with tech I didn’t explore the editing possibilities.
@PaintedHorseArt Great! Hopefully it isn’t too confusing.
I normally use a fancier/complicated photo editing program, but I just had a go on my phone, and with 2 little changes I don’t think it massively changes the photos so hopefully they’re still true to life, but it does make them stand out a bit more.
(I just put them in a collage so it’s easier to compare)
That’s just from increasing the brightness and then increasing the contrast by around half the amount. If you just increase the brightness then the photos often look washed out, but increasing the contrast should fix that. I’ve found half is usually a good amount to look natural and not overly contrasted, so if I put the brightness up by 20, I put the contrast up by 10.
I hope that helps with your testing (I picked the second photo from the flower card because I think that layout works really well as a thumbnail for the first photo).
Thanks again Kim, I really do appreciate it, I have on my list of things to do, changing all my cards to the layout you’ve got above as the first thumbnail as I much prefer that layout myself, one thing I did notice was that some of the envelopes tilt the opposite way, my OCD won’t let me leave them like that, yet another thing on my to do list.
No, you shouldn’t quit.