Gift Wrapping

Do you want to save a little bit of time during the holidays? I will gift wrap any order, even larger items like Perma-Pets.

Holiday Shipping Deadlines

If you are planning to shop with Noadi's Art for the holidays here are your deadlines for ordering. These are my best estimates and not guarantees, so ordering earlier is encouraged.

Hanukkah (Dec 8-16) - For orders to arrive by December 7 you need to order by standard shipping:

• US Mail - December 1
• International - November 26 for most addresses, November 19 for Central America, South America, and Africa.
• APO/FPO/DPO - November 26 for most addresses, November 19 for AE ZIP 093

Solstice/Cephalopodmas (Dec 21) For orders to arrive by December 20 by standard shipping:

• US - December 14
• International - December 5 for most addresses, November 27 for Central America, South America, and Africa.
• APO/FPO/DPO - December 5 for most addresses, November 27 for AE ZIP 093

Christmas/Newtonmas (Dec 25) - For orders to arrive by December 23 by standard shipping:

• US - December 19
• International - December 9 for most addresses, December 2 for Central America, South America, and Africa.
• APO/FPO/DPO - December 9 for most addresses, December 2 for AE ZIP 093 

I've also added these dates to the Events & Dates page.

International Cephalopod Awareness Day Celebration!

On October 8 it is International Cephalopod Awareness Day and in celebration of this day I'll be doing several things:

1: I'm giving away the necklace on this page. Here are the rules:

• To enter all you have to do is leave a comment on this post saying which cephalopod is your favorite between now and 6pm (EST) on October 8. I won't consider any entries posted after that time. 
• I'll be pulling the winner out of the virtual hat at 7pm on October 8. I will announce the winner shortly after 7pm so watch this blog (if you're on twitter leaving your twitter username will make it possible for me to contact you directly as well) 
• The winner will have 3 days to claim their prize by emailing me their mailing address. 
• In the event the prize isn't claimed I'll pull a new number out of the hat.
  

2: Free shipping October 8 on everything in my Etsy shop featuring a cephalopod (necklaces, earrings, perma-pets, etc.) sorry that I can't offer international shipping free but it will be greatly reduced.

3: Little cephalopod surprise with every order. It's a surprise so I'm not telling you what it is.

4: Today is my one year anniversary on Etsy (yes I know my account says September 28 but I didn't actually open shop until October 1st last year) it's amazing how far I've come since then.

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.

Finally made up my mind.

It took a while but I did finally make up my mind about what to sculpt for the center of that lavender necklace: a seahorse. I managed to match the colors quite closely with premo (didn't paint this one other than the eye and clear coating it) and added some pearl ex powders in micro pearl, misty lavender, and interference violet.

I also made a small pair of matching earring with two more of the briolette beads. It's up for sale on Etsy.

Gearing Up for the Holidays

I'm working on new stuff for the holidays, mostly jewelry, some ornaments, and small sculpture. What would you like to see more of?

I don't know if I've announced this before but if you wish your order to be gift wrapped just tell me so in the notes when you order or drop me an email right after ordering to let me know. Please don't wait long, I'm likely to have already packaged it up and shipped it. I can also include a card if you let me know what you'd like to be written on it.

Get Free Stuff from Me

I'm starting a new promotion for my web shop. If you buy 4 or more items from Noadi's Art Shop from the sculpture, jewelry, or ornaments categories (sorry this doesn't apply to sculpting supplies) I will send you a gift certificate for one free jewelry item. This applies whether you purchase 4 at once or over several orders. Simply fill out the certificate and mail it back to me with your selection and I'll send you your free gift (shipping is free too).

You can choose from gargoyles, cthulhu's gems, cephalopods, cuttlefish, or trilobites, the colors are a surprise.


And now for something completely different: I just started working on the concept sketch for my fire dancer sculpture, I'll post it once I've finished.

I Need Your Feedback

I've had the Noadi's Art Shop up for a few weeks now and so far it's looking pretty good, I'm getting a decent amount of traffic and interest. What I need from my wonderful readers is some feedback on what they would like to see in my store. So the comments are open, let me have it.

Valentine Surprise for a Friend

My best friend's husband showed his sweet side this Valentines Day. He asked me to make a Stone Bonds pin for his wife in their wedding colors which were blue and green.

This was just great to do, Danielle and I have been friends since kindergarten and me and her husband set up this up as a surprise. I had such a hard time keeping a straight face when I was at their place for the Super Bowl and she mentioned Valentine's Day and that her jewelry box looked awful empty.

Little Bit of Sewing

I was thinking yesterday that I wished I had some gift boxes to send out my jewelry in when people order but then I thought that would be a bit of a waste to use two boxes that are likely to be thrown away (the gift box and the shipping box) so I thought of fabric bags. Most people I think would keep it if not for the jewelry then to put change or little objects in.

So I broke out the sewing machine today to make up some little gift bags. I have a big box full of fabric odds and ends that I rarely use because most pieces are too small to do much with. Here are the first three test ones. It took me about 45 minutes to make them all but now that I have the process down I could churn them out pretty quickly.

So from now on anyone ordering one of my jewelry designs will be getting it in one of these cute little bags. Colors or course will depend on the fabric I have but I'll try to match it to the jewelry if I can.

New Gargoyle Series

I've been making the Gargoyle Pendants and Ornaments for some time now and people seem to like them. However I've been getting a little bored with making them so I wanted to have a little more variety. Since the next big holiday comign up is Valentine's Day I thought gargoyle couples would be cute. I haven't quite decided what I want to call them, my first though was Gargoyles in Love but I think they would work just as well for gifts between good friends as well so I'm not sure exactly what would fit.

This is just a quick photo, I'll take better lit ones for my website once I've finished adding all the jewelry findings and such. Check out the tails, I think that's especially cute. The only problem I see with these right now is the size, they are quite large, a little more than 2 inches across. I worry that it makes them too big to be worn as a necklace and maybe they would work better as pins or barrettes or just as ornaments? I'm not sure yet.

Christmas Goody

So Christmas went pretty well, everyone got sculpted ornaments from me. My best friends and her husband especially like the dragon ornament I made them. My parents were sneaky this year, I had no idea they knew I was looking into a toaster oven for baking my smaller sculpts with. So they got me this very nice one, which is much better than the cheap $20 one I was looking at which was much smaller. Now I don't have to feel so guilty about the wasted electricity or possible fumes from baking my sculpts in the kitchen oven. I'll still need to use the kitchen oven for the occational really large piece but most of the time I won't need to.

If you look to the right you can see that I've added a Tip Jar. If you enjoy my blog or my artwork please consider leaving a donation or better yet purchasing something from my Gift Page to get something for your money.

Random News

Been a busy couple weeks so I thought I'd catch you up on all the happenings.

New Artwork

So first up I've completed some new stuff. Biggest is completing a commissioned sculpture, it's a mermaid bust based on the lionfish holding a blue-ringed octopus (both are highly venomous). You can check it out here: Lionfish Mermaid

Also a new series of pendants based on my favorite sea creatures, octopus and squid. Click here for my Cephalopod Pendants.

Buying My Artwork

Since it's coming up on the holiday season I've launched a new section of my website that I've been thinking about for a while. You can now directly order some of my smaller pieces such as my gargoyle pendants and ornaments, cthulhu's gems, and cephalopod pendants. Soon I plan to add Perma-Pets as well. Please check it out: Little Gifts by Noadi.

Gawker Artists

Recently I was accepted for inclusion in Gawker Artists. Gawker Media uses their spare adspace on blogs like Gizmodo and Lifehacker to display a rotating gallery of artists and other website can also choose to display Gawker Artists as well. Now I'm all for promoting both myself and other artists so as you can see to the left I'm now displaying Gawker Artists here.