Happy New Years

The end is nigh! At least for 2010. I have lots of hopes and plans for Noadi's Art heading into 2011. To celebrate the end of 2010 I'm giving away a free tentacle charm with every purchase through New Years.

Starting to get things ramped up for Valentines Day too. Going to have some pretty pink cephalopods on the way along with more of the new Tentacle Bracelets.

In more personal news this is the first year in quite a while I'll be celebrating Valentines Day with a special someone. I'm with an absolutely fantastic guy that I love dearly and Valentines Day will mark just about 10 months we've been a couple (we started out as just friends and it grew from there).

New Years News

So 2009 is almost over. This has been a real whirlwind year for me, the business has grown far faster and further than I ever expected. At the beginning of the year I had only a single line of cephalopod jewelry, the cuttlefish, and that has expanded to octopus, squid, and the nautilus. I've scrapped the old trilobite design for a new one and added horseshoe crabs and the specimen jars. My monthly sales have gone from around $300 a month to over $1000 monthly before the holidays and exceeded $2000 in both November and December.

Looking ahead to 2010 there's a load of stuff coming up. I just bought a new camera and I'll be redoing a lot of photos with it. I'll also be shooting with the intent of putting together an art book later this year that will be self-published (probably with Lulu.com) and hopefully a lot of fun.

Speaking of books, the Regretsy book is looking like it's coming together really fast and I'm probably going to be featured in it.

I have some new jewelry planned. One is a Cthulhu cameo pendant that will be press molded from polymer clay, fairly inexpensive and fast to produce. The other will be on the higher end. I've had some precious metal clay for a while and I'm hoping to get the silver cephalopods coming along soon.

In personal news, I'm looking for an apartment right now so I'm really excited about finally getting out on my own. Just me and my dog.

Happy New Year

Things have been pretty crazy here lately, between the holidays, running Noadi's Art (I had a very busy holiday season), and the horrible cold I'm suffering from. I hope you all had a great year and that 2009 will be even better! Once I'm over this cold I plan to do some retrospective blog posts talking about how 2008 went for Noadi's Art however right now cold meds are messing with my concentration.

I bought Noadi's Art a Xmas present: a postal scale. Should really save time and my dad's patience since I often ask him to do post office runs for me.

Happy New Year

Happy 2008! Now is the time for resolutions which for most of us won't last past the end of the month. However I figure if I put my resolutions for Noadi's Art up on this blog I can't avoid them or conveniently forget, because I'm sure someone will bring them back to haunt me.

I have two categories of resolutions, one for sculpting and one for the more business side of things.

Sculpting:

1. Finish more large sculptures. I had a grand total of 3 big sculptures that I finished this year, the Satyr, Odin's Runesong, and Lionfish Mermaid. Though I did 17 medium sculpts (baby rat, turtle, lots of perma-pets, etc.), and dozens of necklaces and ornaments. The small stuff is fun and it sells more often but they aren't really challenging. I currently have a pretty big stock of small stuff that I shouldn't need to make lots in the near future except some of those gargoyle couples I just started doing.
2. Improve my anatomy. Especially hands.
3. Try wax! I've never sculpted in wax and I'd love to give it a try.
4. Improve my workspace. Right now I have a tiny corner of the living room for sculpting and part of the unheated basement for airbrushing. I'm unlikely to get more physical space so I need to optimize what I have. Right now it's really jumbled without much storage aside from stacks of little plastic boxes and a book shelf behind my desk. Also I have that great new toaster oven and nowhere to put it.
5. And definitely get a better chair. My desk is too low to stand while sculpting and too high for my chair even at it's highest setting so I need a taller chair.

Business:

1. Sell more! (of course)
2. Do more art shows and festivals. I've not had much luck selling lots at shows but the experience I've had meeting and learning from other artists makes them so worth it.
3. Promote my sculpting more locally. Aside from the one tiny gallery I'm in and the two shows I did in 2007, I haven't done as much as I think I should to get my name out in my area. I know my work is a niche market so the internet will probably remain my main way of selling.
4. Blog more! I've already been writing more often but I really need to keep it up.

2007 Retrospective

So now that 2007 is nearly over it's time to start reflecting on what I've accomplished. Most likely I wouldn't have thought of sharing this if not for Troy McDevitt from the Clubhouse forums who posted a thread asking everyone to cram their 2007 portfolio into one 600x400 pixel image.

Now there's still a little while to go in 2007 so I have a few small projects that I may get finished before the end of the year but nothing significant. While I was compiling this I was able to reminisce over the creation of each piece, what I learned, and the progress I've made. With everything I sculpt there's always something in the end I know could be better but even so I'm really happy with the rate at which I'm improving. As long as I keep learning and improving that's what I think is the most important thing.

Going left to right from the top: Satyr (January), Octopuppy (January), Perma-Pets (ongoing series, started February), Squid (August), Odin's Runesong (September), Lionfish Mermaid (November), Baby Rat (May), Hatching Turtle (July), Frog Ornament (November), Cthulhu's Gems (ongoing series, started June), Cephalopod Pendants (November), Gargoyles (ongoing series, started May).