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.

Creating Glass Squid in Resin

Itsy Bitsy Specimen Jars

I've been busy working on new ideas for jewelry lately, including casting transparent Glass Squid in resin. While I was creating the first one I made videos of the process from sculpt to molding to casting. The first three Glass Squid necklaces should be available in the shop next week.

Also joining them will be the first 3 pairs of new Specimen Jar Earrings! Check out this photo of the finished jars before I attached the earring hooks. They are super tiny, less than half the size of the jars I use for the Specimen Jar Necklaces.

Glass Squid Pendants

And  now for the videos. I hope you enjoy seeing how these necklaces came to be.

Glow in the Dark Necklaces are Here

Continuing to explore the possibilities of my cell culture necklaces I bought some glow in the dark pigment powders. The results have been pretty fantastic and now the necklaces are going up in my Etsy shop. So head on over and check them out.

PortCon is just a week away!

So my big event of the summer, PortCon, is coming up fast. I'll be in the Artists' Alley June 21-23 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in South Portland, Maine. The hours are 9am-10pm Friday and Saturday and 9am-1pm on Sunday. If you're at the con please stop by (I would suggest on Friday or Saturday, I'm going to be pretty fried Sunday morning).

If you're never heard of PortCon it's a huge celebration of all things geeky, there's anime, scifi, fantasy, roleplaying games, video games, comics, etc. and it's a load of fun. I'm going to try to catch a bit of con fun on Thursday night after setting up my table since I'm not going to have time the rest of the weekend.

In somewhat related news I have some new cell culture necklaces that glow in the dark and Cthulhu rings. They will be available at PortCon and afterwards in the Etsy shop.

Getting Ready to Start New Jewelry

The petri dishes for the new Cell Culture Pendants arrived today. I'm so excited! I haven't created a completely new jewelry line from scratch in quite a while. I've created new variations and expansions pretty regularly but starting from just an idea that came to me while half-asleep listening to This Week in Microbiology is so much fun (and who thought that my bedtime playlist would inspire new jewelry?).

New Jewelry Coming and Wholesale Information

Cell Culture Prototypes

2013 is off to a busy start for me. I've been developing some ideas for new jewelry than I'm pretty excited about. The big one are the Cell Culture Pendants. I've made a few prototypes of this new deisgn, they're real small petri dishes filled with resin to look like microbiology specimens. The prototypes were made with some votive candle cups to test out the idea, the real petri dishes are on their way and as soon as they arrive I'll start making these necklaces.

I also have new specimen jars coming, with a new axolotl specimen (big thanks to the person who custom ordered one last year, I just loved the idea so much). Also along the same vein I bought some resin jewelry molds and I'll be using them to create some new designs using the specimens that I think are pretty cool.

On a different note I've finally put together some proper line sheets for wholesale customers. I would love to have more wholesale business but without line sheets it was hard to give a good overview of everything I make and the available colors and styles. They're available on my website and also on Google Docs.

Free Shipping Day

Today is Free Shipping Day and while I offer free shipping on most items in my store already today I'm offering free shipping on everything in the shop, including Perma-Pets and paintings on canvas.

Delivery by Trilobite Mail not included

Last Minute Shopping for Squidmas?

Wednesday, December 19, is the last day I'll be taking regular holiday orders so you still have time to do some shopping and have it arrive in time for Christmas. I still have lots of goodies in the shop including tentacle earrings and the new sea shell jewelry that make great stocking stuffers.If you would like your order gift wrapped make sure you mention it in the "note to seller" during checkout.

I have a couple of brand new color schemes for cephalopods that I just added to the shop: moss green and black. Also some new trilobites and tentacle earrings. If you like my facebook page there's a 7% off coupon here.

If a giant space squid hasn't destroyed the planet there will also be a special sale in honor of the world not ending on Dec 22 (very last sale of 2012). Orders placed that day won't arrive in time for Christmas but you could always get a jump start on Valentines Day or an upcoming birthday or just treat yourself to a cephalopod.

Quick Announcements

Lots going on so I'm just going to list everything real quickly.

• I'm at the Portland Flea-for-All this weekend (Nov 17-18).
• I'm at the Portland Flea-for-All Friday-Sunday next weekend too (Nov 23-25)
• Also next weekend is Black Friday, I'll be holding a 10% off sale throughout the Etsy shop Friday-Monday (Nov 23-25) the sale will also extend to my booth at the Flea-for-All. And because I'm a sucker for puns I'm calling it the Holiday Tentacular! If you are impatient the sale will go live sometime Thanksgiving night instead of at midnight so I can settle into my turkey coma.
• New stuff is being added to the shop right now. Along with new cephalopod jewelry there's also tentacle earrings. seashell necklaces, and super adorable sea otter ornaments.

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:

Cuttlefish and Squid Day

Cuttlefish are my first love when it comes to cephalopods, they are the animals which sparked my interest. So for Cuttlefish and Squid day I have the biggest giveaway item of the week. And of course you still have until the end of Friday, Oct. 12, to head over to my Etsy shop and get 15% off on cephalopod jewelry (go on, get yourself something tentacled).

I decided to try something new and use Rafflecopter to run the giveaway and run it from noon to midnight. To enter you need to log in with Facebook or enter your email address then answer the trivia question which will give you 5 entries (make sure if you use Facebook login that you check the email associated with your Facebook account regularly). You can also gain some extra entries via social media. I'll draw the winner by noon tomorrow, October 11.

Noadi's Art Cuttlefish & Squid Day Giveaway

If you want to share the giveaway on your own blog go here for the embed code (won't help your chances of winning but you will have my thanks).

Nautilus Night

It's Nautilus Night! The day dedicated to celebrating the most ancient group of living cephalopods.

Today's giveaway is a 7"x5" Natural History Nautilus print and handmade polymer clay nautilus shell pin.

TO ENTER
Click the link below to go to a Google form and answer the nautilus trivia question.
Answer Nautilus Trivia

THE RULES
1) You must enter between 12pm and 8pm EDT on Oct. 9, 2012.
2) Open to US residents only (sorry).
3) You can only answer the question once, duplicate entries will be deleted.
4) You must enter a valid email address, it is the method I will use to contact the winner.
5) There is no 5.

If you want some nautilus jewelry head over to the Etsy shop to get 15% off your order of any cephalopod jewelry.

Share and enjoy.

Octopus Day

It's Octopus Day! The kickoff of Cephalopod Awareness Days.

Today's giveaway is a 4"x5" print of my painting "Octopus in Kelp Forest" and a crimson tentacle pin. If you want your chance to win the giveaway go check out the Facebook page between 12pm an 8pm EDT today for how to enter.

Remember there is 15% off all octopus, squid, nautilus, and cuttlefish jewelry in the Etsy shop through October 12th.

Cephalopod Awareness Days are Imminent

It's almost time, I'm so excited! Cephalopod Awareness Days kicks off at midnight on October 8th. I was going to write a post with all the information again and pictures of the giveaway items but I decided instead to just make video.

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Cephalopod Necklace Options

Etsy has rolled out a great new prototype feature so listing variations. This means that for some of my jewelry you can now select the length of the cord and it's material.

I'm still working on updating all the listings. When I'm finished you will be able to choose the length and cord material for all cephalopod, sea horse, trilobite, and horseshoe crab necklaces.

Specimen jars and Lovecraftian jewelry are still going to be resized by custom request only.

Just a reminder, you can still vote on which animal I create as an ornament this year.

Polymer Clay Vacation

I love what I do, I have the best job in the world. So I'm being proactive and taking a vacation from sculpting anything for at least a month. I have a single custom order to finish in the next few days and then I'm putting away the clay and focusing on drawing, painting, and art education for a full month. Once the month is over I'm going to work on figural non-cephalopod sculpture for another month.

Right now I have my Etsy shop fully stocked (in fact I still have about 50 pieces done that I need to list in the next week or so) so I don't need to make anything right now. A 2 month jewelry making vacation will help me be all refreshed and ready to focus on the holiday season. I've already started this by playing with my new heavy body acrylic paints and making this quick little 7"x5" painting on canvas board of a jellyfish swarm and it's already up on Etsy in the brand new Paintings and Prints section.

My current project of the last few days is to work on copying Bargue plates which is a traditional drawing exercise. If you want to learn more about Bargue plates I suggest reading this great thread on ConceptArt. I'm not doing these with quite as precise a method as described because part of what I am doing is an exercise in learning to judge relative distances without laying any measurement devise down directly on the plate I'm copying from. If you are interested in downloading the plates to work from go here.

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.

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).

View Larger Map

Painting a Blue Ringed Octopus

Continuing my series of behind the scenes videos showing the work that goes into my jewelry. This video shows the process of bringing a Blue Ringed Octopus necklace to life. The sculpting while the most important part of the process is bland and lifeless until the eyes are painted, they bring the personality of the pendant out.

Note: I've made a minor change to the Etsy shop, I now only accept paypal in the shop. Offering "Other" as an option for people who prefer Google Checkout caused more confusion and problems than it solved. If you want to pay with Google Checkout you need to contact me in advance.