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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Quick Note on Necklaces

After running a survey and getting feedback elsewhere I'm going to be changing my standard necklace length for a number of designs to 20 inches from 24 inches. This includes the octopus, squid, cuttlefish, nautilus, and trilobite designs (other designs like the specimen jars and tentacle chokers are different lengths already, 18 and 15 inches respectively).

Most feedback said they preferred a necklace that was 18 inches long though in my judgement that's a little too short for such large pendants.  Using myself as a guide they just don't quite hang right so short (though on a shorter person they might, I'm 5'6"). I will always re-size necklaces to whatever length a customer would prefer but most people just order the standard size that's offered so I want to have one that makes the most people happy.

Necklaces currently in stock won't be shortened right away (it would be a big project) but all necklaces made going forward will be, including 3 I'm finishing up right now. This goes along with some other changes I will be announcing in the next few days, I am waiting on some new supplies to be delivered that will allow me to expand the jewelry I offer. Nothing is going away, I promise, this is all new stuff that will be added to what I already create.

Cuttlefish Jewelry Video

Another slideshow of my jewelry, this time the cuttlefish.

Space Cephalopod Video

I put together this slideshow video of my space cephalopod jewelry yesterday.

Cephalopod Day Giveaway Winner

The time has come to see who wins the octopus necklace. There were 49 entries (excluding two people who posted as Anonymous) so drum roll please:

The 4th entry wins and that is Jae!

Jae said...

Cuttlefish is so cute, but the giant squid... those guys I can just watch in awe 24/7. I anxiously wait for the day when we can actually find and watch these amazing creatures on a regular basis instead of only catching glimpses or finding corpses.

So please contact me Jae at NoadiArt@gmail.com with your mailing address in the next 3 days to claim the necklace.

New Line of Squid Jewelry

This is one of those strokes of luck when a customer requests something that you've been putting off doing so it spurs you to do it. I was contacted by a customer to create a custom squid necklace for a friend of hers. Now since I already make cuttlefish and octopus the logical next step is of course to do squid. However cuttlefish and squid are pretty similar so I'd been putting off figuring out how to do a squid that is sufficiently different from my cuttlefish. This custom request made me actually site down and do so.

It took me some planning, sketching, and looking at squid photos to make up my mind but I'm happy with the results. I hope this new line is as successful as my cuttlefish and octopus have been so far.

Squid Jewelry

Feeling Warm and Fuzzy

I got some feedback on one of my cuttlefish necklaces today that totally made my day.

Thanks for the necklace! It's even prettier in real life, and the pictures had me going 'wow' in the first place. The cord is the perfect length, you have no idea how frustrated I get when I buy a pendant or necklace and the cord automatically makes it a choker. The little charm included is cute too and makes a nice earring! What really won me over was the fact that you actually INCLUDED an invoice and a neat pamphlet about your work. Many people on Etsy and other sites often forget to include the invoice, and the pamphlet and business cards are a nice touch and chance for the buyer to learn a little more about the artist and the jewelry as well (storing and cleaning instructions are greatly appreciated). Thank you so much for this order! I love the pendant and the care you put both into making it and sending it my way!

Creating my jewelry and to have people buy it is thrilling enough but to hear from someone so excited about it is just amazing.

New Design and a Bad Day

Yesterday was pretty rough for me. I have a lot of pets and I'm very attached to all of them. Yesterday my dad found one of our goats Tansy shortly after she died, when I got out to the barn she was still warm. It was a total shock, she was acting fine in the morning. She ate normally, wanted to be petted, begged for a fruit treat, just a regular morning. She was an older goat, eight years old, from the position she was in it looks like she was probably asleep and didn't suffer which I'm glad about.

Here's a photo of Tansy playing with Blossom (she's the white and tan one).

I did finish a new necklace design in the same style as my cuttlefish but this one is an octopus. I really like how it turned out. Orange Octopus Necklace

New Cuttlefish Complete

So here are the newest cuttlefish. As you can see the translucent ones turned out quite well. I also made a much darker cuttlefish as well. This was also an experiment with colored clay, this time pure black clay colored with just a little red paint and Pearl Ex powders in Super Russet and Blue Russet.

Want a free necklace?

Running a quick promotion for my new Etsy Shop anyone who buys anything at all from my shop in the next 24 hours (ending 9pm eastern time tomorrow) gets a free Cthulhu's Gem necklace with a leather cord.

Can't Make Up My Mind

I bought some really pretty glass beads last weekend, lavender briolettes (teardrop shaped with a hole through the point) and oblong frosted clear beads. I put them together with some clear size 6 seed beads, those are the larger of the two common sizes, on my bead board into a very pretty necklace design. I also made wire-wrapped dangles with 3 of the briolettes, 2 are for earrings. The third is where my problem comes in, I want to sculpt a central pendant with that briolette hanging from the bottom.

I have no idea what to sculpt! I'm totally drawing a blank, about all I've decided is that it should be in the same general color palette as the beads. This is a very different design in color and mood than what I normally do so it's really frustrating me, flowers come to mind but so many designs use flowers.

More changes to my store

I'm continuing to reevaluate my prices and what jewelry I'm going to continue to make. I've already stopped making the cephalopod bubble gem jewelry and marked those down to $10. Now I've dropped the prices on my Cthulhu's Gems necklaces, $12.50 for the ones with the leather cords and $15.75 for the ones with silver chains. I've wanted to have a broader range of prices for a while but I've been agonizing about exactly what the new prices should be but I think I've come up with reasonable prices for the complexity and time involved.

Brand New Jewelry

So I've been busy this week making jewelry. First are a brand new design I made using some new premo frost along with purple and yellow premo and some pearl ex pigments. They are tiny little jellyfish earrings and they are quite translucent and almost glow when back lit.

I also sculpted 10 cuttlefish pendants and 30 tiny cuttlefish for earrings (told you I was busy). Here are the first batch I've finished painting. If you notice there's onyl one pair of earrings, that's because I ran out of earring hooks and need to buy some more this week.

From left to right. Top row: Violet Cuttlefish Necklace, Watermelon Cuttlefish Necklace. Bottom row: Mechanical Cuttlefish Jewelry Set, Midnight Cuttlefish Necklace.

I also put together this little video of some of my cuttlefish jewelry. These are all slightly older ones since I did it before finishing these new ones.

Article on Photographing Jewelry

I just had this article published with Associated Content, I wrote about the best ways I've found to photograph my handmade jewelry. I hope you find it useful.

Tips for Photographing Your Handmade Jewelry

Learn how to take beautiful photos of your jewelry creations to use when selling online or just to show them off on your website.

Pondering

I've spent a good chunk of the past few days editing cuttlefish jewelry pictures which is quite repetitive and I've gotten to the point where editing photos is pretty automatic for me. This gives me plenty of time to think and come up with new ideas. I don't know how many of these I'll actually make but they're all pretty fun (my mind starts getting silly after a few hours of any repetitive task).

1: Jellyfish necklace. I picture a transluscent bell with beaded tentacles coming out and wrapping around the neck.

2: Salamander sculpture. I'm craving sprign and one annual sign of spring here is when the spotted salamanders start emerging an migrating to water to lay their eggs.

3: Steampunk cephalopods. I'd need to get some gears and other mechanical bits and sculpt a squid or octopus with a panel that opens up to reveal clockwork inside.

4: Dance figure studies. I've found some great reference photos of dancers and contortionists that I'd like to incorporate into some sculptures. I've had the idea of a fire dancer for a while so maybe consinue the theme with different elements.

I think I'm done with creating cuttlefish jewelry for a while. I love making them but I've got a pretty good inventory of them right now so I need to move on to other projects. Here's the most recent additions.

All my Cuttlefish Jewelry.

Batch of Cuttlefish

I finally feel like I'm getting back to normal. I finished up 4 sets of cuttlefish jewelry last night. I'm not done though, I'm working on a few more pendants and pairs of earrings that will be sold separately rather than as sets.

These are so fun to make. You can check out all my Cuttlefish Jewelry here.