PortCon Wrap Up

So PortCon has come and gone and it was fantastic! Hands down the best event I've ever participated in as a seller and the folks running the Artists' Alley were fantastic. How well did it go? I sold more in 3 days than I do in an average, non-holiday season, month. I count that as an overwhelming success and it was a lot of fun. I'm a huge geek so being around hundreds of fellow geeks and chatting about Cthulhu and Dr Who with people stopping by my table was fantastic. I'm definitely going to sign up for next year.

The down side? I was around hundreds of people for 3 days and people are walking germ factories. I've got a cold now.

PortCon this Weekend!

So the big weekend is almost here. I'll be in the Artists' Alley at PortCon bright and early Friday morning. If you are at the con, please stop by and say hi. I have a stack of 10% off coupons for my Etsy shop to anyone who buys something and since I have so many if you introduce yourself and tell me you read this blog entry I'll give you one too.

Speaking of my Etsy shop, since I'll be so busy at PortCon I'll be putting the shop in vacation mode Thursday night before bed and it will be back up by Monday, June 25.

Birthday Sale

Saturday, June 9th, is my 30th birthday. I might actually need to start acting like a grownup. Nah, that's no fun.I am however having a 10% off sale in the Etsy shop through the end of Sunday. If you are in the Portland, Maine, area stop by the Portland Flea-for-All on Sunday, June 10th, for 10% off in person.

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.

We Have a Winner

The voting for the new jewelry line is now over and we have a surprise winner. There were a lot of write in options, including some great ideas that I may use sometime, and the winner was a twitter suggestion: Cephalobots. It won with more than double the votes of the runner up. Thank you to everyone who voted, I was pleasantly surprised by how many suggestions other than my original two (Technopods and Cyberpods).

Vote on the Name of my New Cephalopods!

Below you can see the prototype for my new cephalopod jewelry line. I can't decide what to name them so I put it up as a poll on the Facebook page. So go vote for Cyberpods or Technopods (or leave your own suggestion). The option with the most votes at the end of a week will win.

Cthulhu Spawn Prints for PortConMaine

It's now less than a month until PortConMaine, June 22-24. I just got a bunch of prints of my Cthulhu Spawn illustration that will be available there.

Also I will be at the Portland Flea-for-All again tomorrow, May 27, from 10am to 5pm.

New Jewelry and Next Flea-for-All

After my first weekend at the Portland Flea-for-All I learned some really important things. First of all I had a lot of interest but also a lot of comments about how my jewelry was too bold or out there for a lot of the people shopping. This isn't usually a concern for me when selling online because the beautiful thing about the internet is that you can have very niche products and still sell if the right people are seeing them. When selling in person I need to appeal to a broader audience than just the type of people who buy from my Etsy shop (and that audience changes, I'll have a different selection when I'm at PortCon than at the Flea-for-All).

So to broaden that range of jewelry I offer, including in terms of price, I spent the last week creating a new line of jewelry that fits in with what I already make but has a little more mainstream appeal. So I have a new line of fun, colorful, seashell jewelry. Some are hand formed and some are press molded from silicone molded I made using real seashells. Currently these are only available in person or for custom and wholesale orders. If you are interested in them please drop me an email 

Speaking of the Flea-for-All, the next date I will be there is May 13th (that is Mother's Day) from 10am-5pm. You can find the Flea-for-All at 125 Kennebec Street in Portland, ME (it's the old Asia West showroom).

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Portland Flea-for-All

Noadi's Art will be at the Portland Flea-for-All this spring and summer. The very first day is coming up this Sunday, April 29, from 10am-5pm. Go check out the Portland Flea-for-All's website for more information.

To see all my upcoming events check out my events list on Facebook.





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Lots of Changes and New Happenings

I haven't had time to write a blog post recently because I moved last month. I had to pack up not only all my personal stuff but also move an entire business to a new town. It's a big step but after nearly 2 years together my boyfriend and I decided to take the next step and move in together (in fact today is out 2 year anniversary). Since I'm not tied to a job I have to commute to every day like Mark is, we rented a house in Portland that is fairly close to where he works. So I now live pretty close to the ocean, I could actually walk to Back Cove in about 15-20 minutes.

Portland is a great little city, beautiful red brick buildings in the older parts of town (the city burned to the ground in 1866 and all the wood buildings were replaced with brick), strong art scene, lots of great restaurants, and just generally a good place to be a creative person. It's been a bit of an adjustment from living in a small town but my neighborhood is really quiet with a lot of families that have been here for years (one of my neighbors actually built my house and that was around 50 years ago). I actually watched the kids next door paying catch in the street yesterday, it would have been some flashback from the 50s if it were for their clothes and another neighbor playing some rather catchy latin music.

So what have I been up to since the move? Mostly getting my studio put together and getting back to work. I have a much larger space to work now, the room even has built in storage (which is of course why I claimed it for my studio).

The studio before moving in, the only time it'll ever be neat.

I have loads of new projects to work on that I'll be posting about soon plus preparing for some events where I'll be selling my work locally. The big event is PortConMaine, an anime/gaming/science fiction convention at the end of June that should be great, I attended last year for fun and it's definitely my type of crowd so I'm looking forward to it.