Holiday Kick Off and Announcement

To kick off the big holiday shopping weekend I'm offering free shipping on all jewelry and ornament orders, reduced shipping on sculpture, and free tentacle charms with all cuttlefish jewelry between Friday November 28th and Monday December 1st. You can check out the deal on both my Etsy Shop and my eCrater Store.

My other announcement is of a new blog. I just launched the Handmade Business Blog. It'll be all about the business side of creating, marketing, using different websites, goign to craft fairs, etc. I really hope it becomes a good resource

Etsy Tips

I put together a little article about promoting an Etsy shop yesterday. Most of this information also applies to promoting any handmade shop online but I focused it on Etsy to highlight a few sites that only allow Etsy submissions.

Tips for Promoting an Etsy Shop

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.

Obama has won

I haven't been able to vote all that long, I'm only 26 but this is the first election I really been excited and uplifted by the result. That's all I have to say, someone else once put it much better than I could:

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Go here for the full speech. We did it Dr. King, we elected a black man because he was the best candidate not because of his race. I wish you had lived to see this day.

Get out there and VOTE!

No sculpting related news today I just want to urge everyone who can vote in the US elections to get out and vote! Participate in our quirky form of democracy. Don't forget your local elections and referendum questions as well.

As this post is scheduled to go up I'll probably be out casting my vote for Obama. Hey, I'm a godless liberal what did you expect?

more animals

Commissioned Sculpture Update

This commission has been giving me headaches lately. I don't know why such a simple pose is giving me so much trouble but it is and I feel guilty that I'm not further along than I am.