The Lady of Innsmouth Kickstarter has Launched

It's been an amazing less-than-24 hours. Since I launched the Kickstarter yesterday (a day earlier than planned) it's already hit half it's funding goal.

The Lady of Innsmouth is 8 1/2 inches tall, I started working on her around March of last year and just recently finished her. My goal through the whole process was to mold and cast her in resin, once I added up everything I was going to need to do the casting run I realized it just wasn't in my budget. Thankfully Kickstarter exists and lets me raise money to create a project in advance. If you back the Lady of Innsmouth you can select from several reward options that will get you a completed Lady of Innsmouth statue in three different finished (white resin, limited edition hand painted resin, and cold cast bronze) as well as some lower cost rewards like bookmarks, and art print, or a resin tentacle. So go ahead and check it out.

Patreon Monthly Treasure Chests

You can now support Noadi's Art on Patreon. If you choose $25 or $50 a month you get a box full of goodies from me, it could contain everything from necklaces to sculpture to sketches. You can also choose a smaller amount and get a piece of original art.

New Art and Upcoming Events

Contribute to my Indiegogo campaign.

Lots and lots going on right now so here's a brief run down of my schedule as it looks right now for the rest of the year:

• September 6 - Lewiston-Auburn Mini Maker Faire in Lewiston, ME.
• September 20-21 - BangPop Comic Con in Bangor, ME.
• October 8-12 - International Cephalopod Awareness Days
• October 25-26 - Vermont Comic Con in Burlington, VT.
• Novermber 1-2 - Rhode Island Comic Con in Providence, RI.
• Nov 28-Dec 1 - Black Friday/Cyber Monday

Doing so many events in a short period of time is a huge financial commitment for me. So I’ve set up and Indiegogo campaign to try to offset some of those costs. Every little bit helps so if you are a fan of my work or want to support an independent artist please pitch in (there are perks including a custom sculpture for $500). If I can make this fall a success it will give me a chance to further expand range of events I can attend next year. My goal is to not have to rely solely on sales from my Etsy shop while the shop does well sales are very seasonal.

I've also been busy creating new art and jewelry. The piece I'm most proud of right now is Bastian and Teddy.

New Baby Rat Sculpture

I had intended for this to be part of yesterday's blog post but I still needed to put a few finishing touches on this new sculpture. Actually it's more like 3 sculptures in one setting. If you've seen my baby rat sculptures before you'll know that I like to take a realistic life-sized sculpted baby rat and put it in a cradle made from a household object like a tea cup or an altoids tin.

The latest one is an idea I've had floating around for a while, to nestle several inside a hollowed out book. Part of the problem for me is that I love books and the idea of destroying one is difficult for me, so I hit the local thrift store to find a book that I could feel okay with rendering unreadable. I found the perfect thing: Readers Digest condensed books. I have a strong aversion to abridging literature so these were perfect, they are plentiful, cheap, fairly thick, and hardcover. It's available in my Etsy shop.

Baby Rat Book Nest

Myths & Legends Day

Release the Kraken! It's now the 4th day of Cephalopod Awareness Days and we are taking a brief detour from reality into fiction.

The sale ends tomorrow night, this is your last chance to save this much on cephalopod jewelry until next year's Cephalopod Awareness Days, so head over the Etsy shop ASAP. Also click over to Symbiartic on the Scientific American blog network to read a really cool feature on my jewelry.

Today's giveaway is super simple to enter, no trivia today just tell me what your favorite fictional tentacles creature is. Do you favor the Kraken? Cthulhu? Scylla? Or some other more obscure beastie. Just enter your answers into the Google Form and you get a chance to own this original 5"x7" pen and ink squid drawing.

Entries Closed 

And just because it's so cool, check out the Kraken in LEGO form:

Custom Art Deadline

Creating art pieces like Perma-Pets is time consuming so I have to cut off all custom requests for the holidays on October 15th. So if you want a Perma-Pet, Baby Rat, small painting, or other piece of custom artwork* you need to contact me ASAP either by email or through Etsy.

If you want to order custom jewelry or holiday ornaments you have until November 15th to order those (but sooner is better). Also it is still Cephalopod Awareness Days so all cephalopod jewelry has been marked down 15% through the end of Friday, October 12.

* I may not be able to promise completion of larger pieces of art in time for the holidays even if you order now.

Clay Vacation is Over! Also Other News.

So my 30 days vacation from touching any clay whatsoever is officially over. As I wrote before though I'm still not going to be making any new jewelry for a little while, I'm spending a few weeks working on sculpture and continuing to paint. Since the clay vacation is over I won't be producing as many paintings as I did in the last month but I have a goal of at least one new painting a month. I'm hoping to have some fun new sculptures by the end of the month and be completely refreshed and ready for the holiday rush.

You can still get the free printable bookmarks for signing up for my mailing list (in fact those aren't going away unless/until I create something cooler to download).  Please send in pics of the bookmarks colored by you or a kid in your life by August 18 and I'll post it up on the blog and email you a coupon code for 10% off in my Etsy shop.

One last update: since I'm in redesign mode I'm in the process of creating a new theme for the official site at Noadi.net that I hope to launch sometime this weekend. It's lighter and brighter to go with the new photos and has some cool new features. Here's an early sneak peek:

Octopus in Kelp Forest Painting

If you follow the Noadi's Art Twitter feed or Facebook page I'm sure you've already seen it, for those who haven't however here's the new painting I just finished in watercolors. I'll have prints available in my Zazzle shop soon and eventually high quality art prints on Etsy as well.

New Perma-Pets

In the past couple weeks I've completed 4 new Perma-Pet sculptures. Go check them out on Etsy.

Cool Postcards

Apart from my jewelry and sculpture I also do a little bit of illustration. The majority of the stuff I create I don't like enough to want to sell but the handful that I think are good enough I put up on Zazzle. I recently got a $10 credit from Zazzle that had to be used within 3 days so I had some stickers of my logo made and these really awesome postcards of my Natural History Nautilus illustration.

I'm still collecting answers about what necklace lengths people prefer and taking it will be a big help to me. Click here to take the survey.

Having Fun with New Toy

My Bamboo set up next to my laptop with a quick cuttlefish sketch.

Really it isn't a toy, it's a very useful tool for my artwork it's just so much fun it feels like a toy. I recently got a Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch, it's a graphics tablet that lets me digitally draw and paint in a way that feels a lot like drawing with a pen or pencil. I've been wanting to do a series of illustrations featuring the creatures from my jewelry designs and I kept putting it off because honestly I'm just not that great with paints. I need ctrl+z in real life when it comes to painting anything 2 dimensional, painting jewelry and sculpture is a totally different set of skills it's adding color and enhancing texture I've sculpted, it doesn't deal with things like shading and perspective.

The tablet has taken a little getting used to, it arrived from Amazon last Wednesday and I produced a lot of crappy sketches in GIMP getting used to it. The tablet came with Photoshop Elements but Elements has a lot of features missing that GIMP does have or which CS5 has but neither Elements nor GIMP has (which I understand, Adobe wants people to have a reason to upgrade to Photoshop CS5 but is CMYK too much to ask for Elements?) so I probably won't use it much.

So here's a work in progress painting of a Steampunk Octopus.

Norway Sidewalk Art Show Recap

Another week another art show. This is my last one for the near future so I can go back to focusing on making new jewelry and sculpture for a while. This show was a lot of fun here's how it went:
Scroll to the bottom or go here if you just want photos.

Friday night: I was maybe less than smart about this but the James Randi Educational Foundation was streaming the Amazing Meeting live and I had to watch it. I was up until about 2am watching George Hrab perform his Occasional Songs for the Periodic Elements live which was incredibly good. The streaming video had a chat along with it which made it all the more fun to talk with all these other skeptics. The down side of course was that I had to get up at 5:30 in the morning. That's right I did the show on 3 1/2 hours of sleep.

Saturday 5:30 AM: I am up and getting ready for the show. I already had all the boxes packed so it was just a matter of dressing, eating breakfast, and getting everything loaded in the truck.

7:30 AM: Arrive at the show, sign in and drop off my Natural History Cuttlefish Necklace for judging. Setting up the tent went fast but getting the display ready took me until 9 AM.

9:00 AM: The show starts. From here to 4 PM I didn't keep much track of time but this is more or less in chronological order. These are the highlights that stuck out to me. I wish I'd gotten some pictures of a few things but I was so busy the thought just never crossed my mind.

First sale of the day came early, maybe 20-30 minutes in by an adorable little girl of maybe 5 years old. She really wanted a necklace but Daddy said no because $30 is a little too much for something she's likely to break. I do have the tentacle charms that are a dollar and she went for that idea because she got to pay me with her own money. She was so proud of herself, and she paid me with a dollar coin which was cool first of the new presidential ones I've received (William Henry Harrison on it), Daddy pitched in the extra nickel to cover tax.

Around 10 AM or so Danyelle and James came to help me out for the rest of the day. They live in Norway so a nice short drive for them. They were a huge help, the show would be so much harder and longer without them.

Noon was when the winners of judging were announced, I didn't win anything. Too bad but my jewelry is pretty unusual so I can't say I'm surprised. The winner was a beautiful gemstone and wire-wrapped necklace and totally deserved a prize. All the other jewelry was great too and it had to be a really tough job for the judges.

Shortly after lunch (yummy sandwiches made by Danyelle) a family with their kids came by. Little girl really wanted a squid necklace. Mom said "You don't need a squid necklace", little girl relied "Yes I do!" in a totally serious voice. No sale but a good laugh.

Some entertainment was provided by a procession of pro-marijuana protesters. Now I fully support their position and think marijuana should be legal and treated the same as alcohol (but this is about the art show not drug policy). I still had to find the phrase "I smoke pot but I'm not a criminal" incredibly funny and ironic.

I learned it was a very good idea that I brought findings and tools with me just in case. A girl wanted some of my earrings but the price was more than Grandma wanted to pay so I put a couple matching tentacle charms on earrings and charged her $5 for it.

The only sale of one of my big necklaces (sold a lot of tentacle charms and $5 pieces) was to a girl in her late teens who loves squid. The whole day would have been worth it for just this sale because she was so excited about it and took quite a while to pick out the one she wanted to buy. Finally she settled on the gilded steampunk cuttlefish but took some cards so she could get another one later.

Later in the afternoon I see a couple come by with the guy equipped with a baby sling. Only there was no baby human in it but two adorable kittens. They are fostering the kitten for Responsible Pet Care in Norway a no-kill cat shelter until they are of adoptable age (old enough to be spayed or neutered). I really wish I had thought to get a pictures because it was really cute.

4:00 PM: Show finishes. With Danyelle, James, and my dad it didn't take too long to get everything down and packed in the truck. We listened to the Dr Horrible soundtrack on my laptop while working on it. Done and left by 5 PM.

Big Milestone and Saturday's Art Show

Yes, I do think I'm crazy in doing 2 art shows in 2 weeks. The second show is this Saturday, July 11. It's the Sidewalk Art Show in Norway, Maine, check out this page I put together for info and directions on how to get there.

I just reached a major milestone for my Etsy shop, I've topped 100 sales. This is pretty big for me, I only opened the shop about 9 months ago, it's amazing to see how much it's grown.

Now how to celebrate? I'm thinking with chocolate.

Two Art Shows in Two Weeks

So I'm down to the wire preparing for these two shows. Getting a little stressed but also really excited.

If you're in the Bethel, Maine, area for the 4th of July please come to the Art Fair on the Common. The Norway Sidewalk Art Show on Main Street in Norway, Maine, is on the 11th. Both go from 9am to 4 pm. Expect to see lots of photos after the shows.

I'm a busy bee

Things have been a bit crazy the past few days but in a good way. Here's what's going on:

• Tuesday was my birthday! I'm 27 now. Thursday some friends threw me a little party complete with a cake that had an octopus.
  
• I've had the combination birthday/Yart deal going with half off shipping for jewelry and free gifts going from the 9th and going until tomorrow the 14th.
• Squidoo made some major layout changes including the introduction of themes so I've been updating my lenses to take advantage of them.
• Still preparing for the art shows coming up.
• Between replacing what's sold during my special and preparing for art show I've been busy making new jewelry including these weird specimen jar pendants.
• The show I'm doing July 11th has a $200 jewelry prize so making something special for that.

Clay Experiment and New Biz Cards

I had fun last night working with a new clay mix. I really love how it turned out. The mix is 1/4 block promo frost translucent clay, pinch of purple premo, healthy scoop of sparkle copper pearl ex (the larger sparkley pieces), and small amounts of misty lavender and true blue pearl ex.

I also just got some great brand new business cards that I ordered from Zazzle. I'm so happy with how they turned out. the quality of the printing is very nice.


I'm writing a review of Zazzle for the Handmade Business Blog tomorrow so keep an eye out for it.

Another Post on Packaging

I know I've talked about packaging before but I'm going to do it again because I think it's an important way to make your customer see how much you care about the products you make. I have a whole Squidoo lens dedicated to the idea, you really should go check it out: Make your Handmade Products Stand Out.

The reason I thought about this subject again was that I attended an Etsy Virtual Lab Wednesday night on packaging and it was full of good ideas. One thing that was really stressed was that just sending out your products in it's pretty packaging isn't enough when you're sellign online. You should show your customers exactly the type of packaging that your product will be coming in. The best way is of course to include a photo of your packaging in the product listing.

Here are some examples of my packaging that I photographed last night:

And here is a new video I put together to replace the older one:

Branching off into hair jewelry

I don't know how obvious it is from my profile photo here on the blog but I have very long hair, down past my waist, and I love getting new barrettes and hair sticks to hold it up. So why not make some? Well that's what I've done.

First up here's some cuttlefish hair sticks, click the link under the pics to go to the shop page they're on.

Night Sky Cuttlefish Hairsticks with Moonstone

Green Cuttlefish Hairsticks with Aventurine and Snowflake Obsidian

Next up is an experiment, I'm not sure if I'm going to continue with this series yet. It's a nudibranch (sea slug) barrette.

Blue and Yellow Nudibranch Barrette

Noadi's Art Included in Gift Guides

This is pretty exciting I was featured in two holiday gift guides this week. The first is from Bird on a Wire's Favorite Things 2008. The link will take you to the page for the guide but the actual gift guide is in PDF format.

The second is this very cool video gift guide from Polymer Clay TV.

Cuttlefish Experimentation

So the election and post-election celebration so back to your regularly scheduled Noadi's Art programming.

I recently finished a couple new cuttlefish that were experiments in new techniques.

First is this Violet Cuttlefish. I've done a cuttlefish in this color scheme before but the change in this one is that instead of painting the cuttlefish I used a purple blend of premo and super sculpey with just a little bit of painting for accents. The varnish has misty lavender pearl ex mixed in.


The slightly bigger experiment in colored clay is this Ancient Bronze Cuttlefish. I blended up some green and browns in premo and super sculpey and mashed them all together but didn't blend the colors much to give it a mottled look. Then I rubbed pearl ex powders on the raw clay in super bronze, aztec gold, and spring green, trying to keep the green on green spots and the metallic on brown spots then popped it in the oven. A coat of varnish makes all my cuttlefish shiny and also seals in the powder and paint.



I also rethought my cuttlefish bracelets and have two nice looking ones now that I'm happy with.