The challenge: Pam East faced a significant challenge in modernizing her long-standing business while maintaining the high-quality imagery required for her handmade silver jewelry. With marketing demands and platforms constantly changing and shifting, Pam needed a quick and effective way to create professional-looking product photos for her Etsy store and her jewelry-making classes without an extensive learning curve.
Our solution: Photoroom proved to be a game-changer for Pam. The app’s user-friendly interface allowed her to produce high-quality images quickly. Features like AI Shadows, reflections, and AI photo editing tools enabled her to create stunning visuals that highlighted her jewelry pieces beautifully. Additionally, the ability to switch seamlessly between devices made her workflow more efficient.
Results: Since incorporating Photoroom into her process, Pam has seen a substantial increase in both sales and engagement across her platforms. Her Etsy store now performs exceptionally well, with more visibility and positive responses to her product images. Moreover, Photoroom has saved her significant time (what took three days now takes three hours and what took weeks now takes days), allowing her to focus more on creating and teaching. Her classes have received great feedback, especially those that incorporate Photoroom, helping her students enhance their own photography skills and craft their own success.
Pam East of Pam East Designs started making handmade silver jewelry in 1997. First promoting and selling her masterpieces at small craft shows, Pam—the 2024 Lis-el Crowley Vision Award winner—eventually moved to galleries and then her true passion, teaching jewelry making. Today, she sells her jewelry on Etsy and her jewelry-making classes on CraftCast. She also enjoys a large following on YouTube where she shares a variety of content on her jewelry-making processes and techniques.
Based in Atlanta, Georgia for the majority of her career, today Pam is based in Olympia, Washington, but continues to travel the country and the world sharing her passion for beautiful jewelry and empowering others to create and succeed in their own right.
Pam’s journey as a crafter began attending local craft fairs and over the years, her business grew significantly. From 2000 until the U.S. economic downturn of 2008—after a career-boosting appearance on the then wildly popular craft show The Carol Duvall Show—she also ran a successful enamel bead-making tools and supply business. Since then, Pam has focused more on teaching both in person and online through her captivating videos (her first one was on VHS tape!) and books.
Since closing down the supplies business, Pam has continued to make strides in the jewelry-making and teaching space as a one-woman operation. This has meant wearing at least a dozen different hats at the same time, with the biggest one always being marketing.
“Anytime you own your own business, I would say that 90% of your job is marketing and getting the word out. And it's changed so much in 26 years.” - Pam East, Founder, Pam East Designs
In the past, marketing for Pam involved mostly writing for craft magazines (these were huge in the 90s and early 2000s) like Art Jewelry Magazine, Lapidary Journal, and Jewelry Artists, but now, it's all about the internet and streaming. And with new platforms like TikTok and YouTube shorts and reels becoming more and more influential, staying current and relevant is a constant and vigorous effort.
But despite how much things have changed and continue to evolve over the course of her impressive 26-year career, Pam has been able to accomplish what many can’t. By staying curious and open to learning and adapting as many times as necessary, Pam East Designs has transcended industry trends and continued to bring inspiration and innovation to jewelry enthusiasts and makers around the world.
And in the last year, Photoroom has been a game-changer for Pam’s business, giving her a huge amount of time back to focus more on creating and teaching, while still producing high-quality product photography and marketing to keep her business flourishing.
Launching a seasoned business into a new era of success
While preparing a new class for CraftCast titled, “Phone Photography Secrets Revealed,” Pam was trying to help her jeweler students take better pictures of their work, so she began searching for a good mobile photo editing tool. Essentially, Pam wanted to put a whole studio in a phone.
“I had produced a class in 2017 using a DSLR camera but everybody now wants to use their phone for everything. So I thought, OK, phones have gotten good enough now where you can actually take really good pictures with them. Let me do a class on cellphone photography.”
After looking at a bunch of different tools like Lightroom and Canva, Pam eventually stumbled upon Photoroom. She was immediately hooked by how user-friendly the tool was and how instant the results were.
“The other platforms might have been able to do most of the things Photoroom does, but there was a big learning curve. I looked at Photoroom and there was no learning curve, just punch and play. I was up and running so fast. And I went, ‘I have to show this to my students!"
Pam taught her class, half of which covered how to get a good photo to begin with. The other half dove into how to use Photoroom to edit that photo and take it to the next level. And everyone loved it.
“Everybody was shocked at how much they could do with Photoroom right from their phone. They kept saying how life-changing it was. People are not generally photographers. They don’t have the background and they find it all so intimidating. But Photoroom changes that.”
After that initial class, Pam got so much interest that she created an entire class on Photoroom—a deep dive on the platform including how to make your own backgrounds with AI; how to insert backgrounds so that you can use the same one over and over again; how to use stickers and other fun elements—the whole nine yards.
The class was so much fun and everyone loved it. Some students did complain that Photoroom isn’t free, but I explained it costs money because it’s worth something.
If I want to hire a photographer to take one professional photo of one of my pieces, that’s going to cost more than the annual fee for Photoroom. And I am getting top-notch professional results with Photoroom.” - Pam East, Founder, Pam East Designs
“So my introduction to Photoroom was wanting this studio-in-a-box. I have to say that now, I probably do half my work on my phone and half my work on the desktop. And that’s another thing I LOVE about Photoroom; that I can glide so easily back and forth from devices—whether I’m on my tablet, phone, or my desktop—all my media is right there.”
Pam's favorite Photoroom features give her jewelry-making and teaching business a competitive edge
Photoroom has transformed the way Pam works with images. Her favorite features include AI shadows and reflections, which add a professional touch to her photos with very little time and effort. She loves having complete control over the shadows, whether it's making a piece look like it's hanging in the air or placed against a wall. And reflections create a striking, mirror-like effect that enhances the presentation of her pieces.
The photo editing tools are also essential for correcting lighting and color issues. With just a few tweaks, Pam can brighten dark images, adjust contrast, and correct color tones to make her silver pieces look perfect. Plus, by creating her own backgrounds using AI Backgrounds, Pam is able to keep her Etsy shop vibrant by matching backgrounds to the jewelry pieces—something she’s noticed really helps her break through the noise and stand out amongst other merchants. She also uses templates to streamline this process, allowing for quick adjustments and consistency across her photos.
In addition to product photography, Pam uses Photoroom heavily for her video class content including creating crisp, concise jewelry-making process and tool stills, titles, and thumbnails. Pam finds this clarity is also crucial for standing out in a crowded online space. But her favorite professional use for Photoroom is teaching her students how to use the app to elevate their photography.
“It’s incredibly rewarding to see how much Photoroom helps them showcase their work beautifully. I love giving people the tools they need to be successful. And I’ve gotten more positive feedback on my classes that involve Photoroom than on any other ones I’ve ever taught.” - Pam East, Founder, Pam East Designs
Photoroom isn’t just for Pam’s professional work either; it’s proved to be a fantastic tool for personal projects too. Recently, during long hospital visits with her dad, Pam kept herself occupied and her spirits up by creating 100s of holiday pet portraits for friends and family with Photoroom.
More Photoroom, more sales, more engagement
Photoroom has become an indispensable part of Pam’s workflow, enhancing the quality of her images and her brand with powerful, user-friendly tools while increasing her searches and sales on Etsy and boosting her engagement on Facebook, her #1 marketing channel.
“The time Photoroom saves me is HUGE. What took forever in Photoshop now takes seconds in Photoroom. It's phenomenal and fun!” - Pam East, Founder, Pam East Designs
With more time to focus on creating and teaching, Pam is most excited about all the new classes, projects, and jewelry-making template and stamp designs she has in the works. As she continues to build on an already fun, thriving, and timeless career in jewelry-making; teaching; and content creation, Photoroom has significantly freed up more of her time to do more of what she loves; to dive deeper into her classes and provide an even better experience to her beloved students.
“If you’re considering Photoroom, I highly encourage you to try it. The learning curve is NOTHING, and the [instant] results are worth every penny. Plus, you can be up and running in seconds. Photoroom is an invaluable tool for anyone looking to improve their photo editing quickly and easily. It’s worth it. It’s worth it. It’s worth it!” - Pam East, Founder, Pam East Designs
Try Photoroom yourself today. Available on Android, iOS, or the Web.
