Using Ice Resin

A couple months ago I switched from using Diamond Glaze in my steampunk jewelry to using Ice Resin. I really love this stuff, it comes out crystal clear and very hard.

So I've put together a tutorial Using Ice Resin to Create Jewelry on Squidoo including a couple videos I shot.

Etsy Tips

I put together a little article about promoting an Etsy shop yesterday. Most of this information also applies to promoting any handmade shop online but I focused it on Etsy to highlight a few sites that only allow Etsy submissions.

Tips for Promoting an Etsy Shop

Writing About My Business

Not my personal business of course, I mean Noadi's Art and even more specifically how I do things. It's been a slow evolution for me to become really serious about my artwork as a business. First I just though if I get better at sculpting I'll make money, well that's not really how it works. There's so much more that goes into this that I didn't even imagine when I started a few years ago.

Marketing and branding my business were things I never even considered. I started this blog just as an easier way to keep people updated on what I'm doing than updating my main website all the time. Now I understand that blogging can be a big part of letting people know who I am and promoting my artwork.

It's getting into that time of year when art festivals start cropping up locally and I have to decide which ones to participate in and do a lot of preparation for it all. So all of these things have come together in a series of Squidoo lenses that I've been working on. Partly to help other people and partly as a reminder to myself of what I need to be doing. I hope you check them out and I really hope you learn a couple things.

Make you Handmade Products Stand Out!
Preparing for an Art or Craft Festival
Branding you Handmade Products

I will be participating in a few art festivals, still working out details on which ones but I'll let you know when I know.

Fire Dancer Sculpt WIP

I meant to post this last week but decided the photos I had taken weren't good enough. Life sort of got in the way of sculpting in the last week, one of my cats passed away and I had chicken and pheasant chicks arrive. Now I've got better photos to share so here they are, the first stage of my Fire Dancer sculpt.
If any of you have ever wondered how I make sculptures like Odin's Runesong, Selkie Emerging and the Fire Dancer balace the way they do I've written an article on it. You can check it out here: Building a Balancing Armature.

I've been a Busy Squid

I have an ever growing number of Squidoo sculpting tutorial lenses. Here's the current list, I hope you find them useful.

Polymer Clay Sculpting Tips and Techniques
Techniques for Curing Polymer Clay
Painting Polymer Clay Sculpture
Building Armatures for Polymer Clay Sculpture
Using Liquid Polymer Clay
Polymer Clay Sculpting Tools

And here are some miscellaneous lenses built to be useful for artists.

Taking Successful Photos of your Artwork
Resources for Figure Artists
Resources for Animal Artists

I've also been named a Squidoo Giant Squid which has really motivated me to want to create even more resources for sculptors and artists. So keep a look out here or on Squidoo for them.

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.

Submit Posts to the Carnival of Sculpts

I'll be hosting a blog carnival starting this month for sculptors. Go to BlogCarnival for more information and how to submit your blog posts. It will be posted on the last Friday of every month, for April this will be the 25th (the submission deadline is the 23rd).

The carnival is open to any blog post about a sculptors finished work, works in progress, tutorials, or other interesting posts about your sculpting. Posts needs to be about your own sculpture not other artists work.

eCrater Tutorial

I just finished writing up a tutorial on how to set up a store on eCrater. It runs through all the basic steps to creating your storefront.

How to Start Selling on eCrater

Sculpting the Aging Process with Philippe Faraut

I'm a huge fan of Philippe Faraut's sculpture and anytime he puts a new video up on YouTube (which is sadly not often enough) I get really excited. This video is an amazing progression aging a teenage face into that of an old man.

Odds and Ends

Few interesting tidbits for you today.

First of all the brand new Maine Arts Commission Blog. It's focussed on the arts in Maine but is a good read for any artist.

Second off a great armature tutorial courtesy of Jeff at iSculpt.

Last but not least I've added some handmade sculpting tools to my shop. I make most of my sculpting tools myself and through trial and error have come up with some that I really love. I'm now making these for anyone who would like to buy them.

Pinning down Proportions

Jeff LaMarche has two great articles on proportions that are must reads if you are sculpting or drawing the human figure.

Canons of Proportion and the Ideal, Part 1 covers the systems of ideal proportions laid out through history. The Egyptians, Greek, Vitruvius, etc.

Canons of Proportions II - Faith-Based Canons? takes data from real people (in this case military personel) to determine what the real average human proportions and standard range most people fall into.

How to Build a Foamcore Bookstand

I was asked about how I made my bookstand tonight. I whipped up these plans and thought I should share it for anyone who would like to build one.

Click the image to view the full sized plans.

Action Figure Construction with Mike Leavitt

Mike Leavitt creates very quirky, sometimes a bit twisted, one off action figures. On his website he demonstrates the process he uses to create his sculptures. It's extremely interesting and I learned a bit about articulating figures which is something I've never tried, definitely worth checking out.

He also has a bunch of great demo videos up on his YouTube Channel


I should point out that he uses styrofoam for some of the internal structures, please do not try this most styrofoams release harmful chemicals when heated and may even catch fire in the oven (not all, I'm assuming he uses a safe variety but just to be safe avoid the stuff). Use a non-hazardous material like aluminum foil, dried paperclay, or oven safe self-hardening materials like magicsculpt and aves apoxie.