Noadi's Art Blog

Norway Sidewalk Art Show Recap

2009-07-12T19:45:00.001-04:00

Another week another art show. This is my last one for the near future so I can go back to focusing on making new jewelry and sculpture for a while. This show was a lot of fun here's how it went:
Scroll to the bottom or go here if you just want photos.

Friday night: I was maybe less than smart about this but the James Randi Educational Foundation was streaming the Amazing Meeting live and I had to watch it. I was up until about 2am watching George Hrab perform his Occasional Songs for the Periodic Elements live which was incredibly good. The streaming video had a chat along with it which made it all the more fun to talk with all these other skeptics. The down side of course was that I had to get up at 5:30 in the morning. That's right I did the show on 3 1/2 hours of sleep.

Saturday 5:30 AM: I am up and getting ready for the show. I already had all the boxes packed so it was just a matter of dressing, eating breakfast, and getting everything loaded in the truck.

7:30 AM: Arrive at the show, sign in and drop off my Natural History Cuttlefish Necklace for judging. Setting up the tent went fast but getting the display ready took me until 9 AM.

9:00 AM: The show starts. From here to 4 PM I didn't keep much track of time but this is more or less in chronological order. These are the highlights that stuck out to me. I wish I'd gotten some pictures of a few things but I was so busy the thought just never crossed my mind.

First sale of the day came early, maybe 20-30 minutes in by an adorable little girl of maybe 5 years old. She really wanted a necklace but Daddy said no because $30 is a little too much for something she's likely to break. I do have the tentacle charms that are a dollar and she went for that idea because she got to pay me with her own money. She was so proud of herself, and she paid me with a dollar coin which was cool first of the new presidential ones I've received (William Henry Harrison on it), Daddy pitched in the extra nickel to cover tax.

Around 10 AM or so Danyelle and James came to help me out for the rest of the day. They live in Norway so a nice short drive for them. They were a huge help, the show would be so much harder and longer without them.

Noon was when the winners of judging were announced, I didn't win anything. Too bad but my jewelry is pretty unusual so I can't say I'm surprised. The winner was a beautiful gemstone and wire-wrapped necklace and totally deserved a prize. All the other jewelry was great too and it had to be a really tough job for the judges.

Shortly after lunch (yummy sandwiches made by Danyelle) a family with their kids came by. Little girl really wanted a squid necklace. Mom said "You don't need a squid necklace", little girl relied "Yes I do!" in a totally serious voice. No sale but a good laugh.

Some entertainment was provided by a procession of pro-marijuana protesters. Now I fully support their position and think marijuana should be legal and treated the same as alcohol (but this is about the art show not drug policy). I still had to find the phrase "I smoke pot but I'm not a criminal" incredibly funny and ironic.

I learned it was a very good idea that I brought findings and tools with me just in case. A girl wanted some of my earrings but the price was more than Grandma wanted to pay so I put a couple matching tentacle charms on earrings and charged her $5 for it.

The only sale of one of my big necklaces (sold a lot of tentacle charms and $5 pieces) was to a girl in her late teens who loves squid. The whole day would have been worth it for just this sale because she was so excited about it and took quite a while to pick out the one she wanted to buy. Finally she settled on the gilded steampunk cuttlefish but took some cards so she could get another one later.

Later in the afternoon I see a couple come by with the guy equipped with a baby sling. Only there was no baby human in it but two adorable kittens. They are fostering the kitten for Responsible Pet Care in Norway a no-kill cat shelter until they are of adoptable age (old enough to be spayed or neutered). I really wish I had thought to get a pictures because it was really cute.

4:00 PM: Show finishes. With Danyelle, James, and my dad it didn't take too long to get everything down and packed in the truck. We listened to the Dr Horrible soundtrack on my laptop while working on it. Done and left by 5 PM.

Big Milestone and Saturday's Art Show

2009-07-08T14:25:00.000-04:00

Yes, I do think I'm crazy in doing 2 art shows in 2 weeks. The second show is this Saturday, July 11. It's the Sidewalk Art Show in Norway, Maine, check out this page I put together for info and directions on how to get there.

I just reached a major milestone for my Etsy shop, I've topped 100 sales. This is pretty big for me, I only opened the shop about 9 months ago, it's amazing to see how much it's grown.

Now how to celebrate? I'm thinking with chocolate.

Bethel Art Fair Recap

2009-07-06T12:00:00.005-04:00

So Saturday was my first art show of the year. Here's how it went.
(scroll down to the bottom if you just want to see the photos)

Friday
7:00 PM-9:30 PM: Janet threw a party for the Shy, Novice, and Closeted Art Show. I was the graduate this year so they sponsored my booth for the show on the Common.

The party was a lot of fun. There was wonderful food provided by some of the artists in the show and Janet's house looked gorgeous with all the art displayed. The party didn't go totally smooth, shortly after it started a big thunderstorm hit, so we lit candles around the house just in case the power went out.

10:00 PM: I get home and with my dad get the truck packed up to go. I don't get to bed until 12:00 AM.

Saturday
5:30 AM: I get up to get ready for the show. I got maybe 4-4.5 hours of sleep. This was not a good idea. We also had to repack the truck to make sure none of the boxes got wet because it was raining a bit.

7:00 AM: Arrive at the show, check in, start setting up the booth. It was still raining but lightly.

9:00 AM: Show starts. There was a good crowd starting off pretty early and the first half of the day went great. This is when I made the most sales and got a lot of compliments on my work. I sold one of my octopus necklaces to a lady who wanted to give it to her daughter who's a veterinarian and octopus lover which was just great.

Why do so many people break the rules? The show stated very plainly that dogs were not welcome but there were so many there. I have no problem with well trained dogs (and most were wonderful and friendly) but why bring a puppy that isn't even leash trained yet? Luckily I had no mishaps with dogs knocking things over but it was close.

12:00 PM: Friends Danyelle and James come to help me out the rest of the day.

12:30 PM: 10 minute downpour. Unfortunately this is when the show started dwindling in visitors, the rain drove off a lot of them and they didn't return. Still had a good crowd but not as good as in the morning.

There were a ton of kids at the show, a lot more than I've seen at other shows I've done. Most of the kids were great and a lot of fun. There was one boy in particular who was probably about 9 or 10 who loved my squid necklaces. He came and looked at them then ran off and brought his mom back, she said no. About 5 minutes later he was back with his dad who also said no. I'm surprised I didn't see him back with a grandparent. I felt kind of bad for him but I don't blame his parents, the necklace is $30 and while my necklaces are fairly tough I don't think they could survive an active 9 year old boy for too long.

4:00 PM: Show wrapped up and with Danyelle and James' help I got everything packed up pretty quickly except the canopy. It had started to rain again just after 4 so we waited under the canopy until my dad arrived with the truck.

Good:

There was a great crowd with a lot of enthusiastic people.
The organizers and other artists there were all incredibly friendly and helpful.
Sales met my goal, obviously selling more would always be great but the show is about getting my name out more than making a lot of cash.

Bad:

The weather.
Visitors did skew to older folks and couples with young kids which are not my best audience.
I didn't set up my booth in the best way I think. Too much high priced sculpture, next show I'm not bringing so much. Also I should have arrange the tables in an outward face U that people could walk around rather that face in because not enough people could fit inside the area.

Two Art Shows in Two Weeks

2009-06-30T15:30:00.000-04:00

So I'm down to the wire preparing for these two shows. Getting a little stressed but also really excited.

If you're in the Bethel, Maine, area for the 4th of July please come to the Art Fair on the Common. The Norway Sidewalk Art Show on Main Street in Norway, Maine, is on the 11th. Both go from 9am to 4 pm. Expect to see lots of photos after the shows.

Having fun

2009-06-23T17:20:00.001-04:00

I'm getting more prepared for the art shows coming up. I got a 3rd large table and a little side table for my checkout area, a new cashbox (this one actually has a working lock!), and a few other things. If it ever stops raining this week I need to do a test run setting up the canopy and tables.

I also got yet more supplies. This time a collection of little bottles to fill.

Sexy Squid Shoes

2009-06-20T14:03:00.001-04:00

Sexy Squid Shoes
Originally uploaded by Noadi - noadi.net

I just had to show these amazing shoes I got on Etsy. Aimee's Armoire custom painted these gorgeous tentacled shoes for me and they are amazing.

I'm a busy bee

2009-06-13T17:40:00.000-04:00

Things have been a bit crazy the past few days but in a good way. Here's what's going on:

Tuesday was my birthday! I'm 27 now. Thursday some friends threw me a little party complete with a cake that had an octopus.
I've had the combination birthday/Yart deal going with half off shipping for jewelry and free gifts going from the 9th and going until tomorrow the 14th.
Squidoo made some major layout changes including the introduction of themes so I've been updating my lenses to take advantage of them.
Still preparing for the art shows coming up.
Between replacing what's sold during my special and preparing for art show I've been busy making new jewelry including these weird specimen jar pendants.
The show I'm doing July 11th has a $200 jewelry prize so making something special for that.

Some deals for you

2009-06-07T15:25:00.000-04:00

Etsy is having a Yart Sale from June 10th-14th. My birthday is on June 9th so I'm going to kick it off a day early. From Tuesday through Sunday I will have discounted shipping throughout my Etsy shop.

In my ecrater shop I've now set up a section of discounted jewelry.

Ramping Things Up for Summer

2009-05-28T16:25:00.000-04:00

I have my first show of the summer in just over a month so I'm busy getting ready. Part of it is a total overhaul of my display. One thing I absolutely had to have was a new canopy because my old one is in bad shape which will teach me not to buy a cheap canopy that wind can tear apart. This time I went for sturdy..

I also feel so much more professional with the display busts and earring card racks I bought too. I like to make my displays as much as possible but these were things I thought it was better to buy. They're all black so they will go well with the trays I made last year and contrast with the light color of the sea shells and glass I have too. I don't have them assembled yet but I'm going to put half spheres of styrofoam in fishbowls and use that to display my hair sticks which I think will be really cute.

I also just got these great stamps made. They're for a lot of things but one thing I'm planning is to use the big logo stamp on paper bags for the shows to put purchases in.

Zazzle Designs

2009-05-19T12:00:00.001-04:00

I have a little store on Zazzle when I have tshirts and stuff of my designs and I just added some with the cuttlefish illustration form my logo. They're in the original green and also one in red. Zazzle is a lot of fun and I've done some printing of business cards and a tshirt with them and the quality is very good, I highly recommend them.

Green Cuttlefish Shirt by NoadiArt
Create Custom TShirt on Zazzle.com

Noadi's Art Logo

2009-05-14T01:50:00.006-04:00

After avoiding it for a long time I decided that Noadi's Art really needed a logo. Graphic design isn't something I have a lot of experience and it took me a while to get the hang of using Inkscape to trace and color the sketch I made. I like how it looks though.

Here's the full color logo on the background color I use in my shop banner. I have several versions like the grayscale, and black and white along with a few others. One of the nice things about using a vector program like Inkscape for this is it made it very easy to do the color swapping. Of course my logo is of a cuttlefish.

Little Fun with my Steampunk Cephalopods

2009-05-10T12:00:00.001-04:00

So I just got done making, photographing, and listing a bunch of new steampunk cephalopods jewelry in my Etsy Shop. Along with the distressed gray metal look I had been doing I created a more fanciful and feminine steampunk look in a deep burgundy red with antique gold edging that makes it look gilded. I'm very happy wiht how these turned out and how popular my steampunk cephalopods have been recently.

I decided I wanted to do a slideshow of them and this is what I created using animoto.

New Books Again

2009-05-08T16:05:00.000-04:00

I love when boxes from Amazon arrive. This month I used my affiliate earnings to buy 3 books I've had my eye on for a while, Faux Surfaces in Polymer Clay, DIY: Design it Yourself, and Craft Inc.

I'm excited about doing some cool faux surface cuttlefish and stuff. The other two are more to help me on the business side of things and I'll be reviewing them on the Handmade Business Blog in the next few weeks.

Fun Supplies

2009-05-02T17:10:00.000-04:00

Twitter is a wonderful thing, I was talking about how I wanted some old mechanical watches for parts and one of my friends put me in touch with a store that sells vintage items. I got 12 lovely but broken ladies watches.

Now what do I use these for? Well the innards get used for my steampunk cephalopods, I now have cuttlefish, octopus, and squid in this style. The cases are all quite pretty and I'm thinking of using them so make mini shadow-boxes. Whether they'll all be necklaces or if I'll use the wrist watch cases for bracelets I haven't decided yet. In any case I'm having fun taking the watches apart.

I have some ideas for switching up the steampunk cephalopods a bit. First of all a more feminine version in red an gold rather than gray and brass.

New Books

2009-04-10T20:55:00.000-04:00

I love my Amazon Associates account, once a month they pay me in gift certificates so I can indulge my book addiction (if someone clicks an amazon link from this blog or my Squidoo lenses and buys something I get a percentage). Last few months I've been getting astronomy related stuff but this month I got some clay related books.

I bought a metal clay kit back in February but haven't really wrapped my head around it yet, much different feel from polymer clay and it dried very rapidly (partly the dry winter air, I hope it won't be so bad this summer). The book has already answered some questions I had and it came with a free DVD that I need to watch soon.

The second is a book on polymer clay that I've been looking at for a while. It's all about different surface effects you can get with polymer clay. I'm always looking for new ways to finish my jewelry to give it different looks.

Lots of new supplies

2009-03-28T01:10:00.001-04:00

So I got a big box of new clay today. Some fun new colors of premo and also some of the new Studio by Sculpey clay. It's a nice clay, easy to condition but way too soft for me. I need a firmer clay even Premo is too soft for me sometimes when sculpting. So definitely going to leach it.

What about the finished clay? Well it lives up to it's hype about having a suede-like finish, very soft and pretty. Definitely gives a different look to this cuttlefish.

Summer Art Shows

2009-03-26T15:20:00.002-04:00

I'm working on planning the shows I'll be doing this summer. So far I'm completely registered and paid up do the Bethel Art Fair on July 4th in Bethel, Maine. I'm also planning on doing the Norway Sidewalk Art Show again (in Norway, Maine) which is the next weekend July 11th but I haven't gotten the application in yet.

I also found out that the Western Maine Art Group has spaces for artists at the Oxford County Fair. I'd like to do that for one day (it would be between the 13th-19th of September) but I'm waiting to hear back on some questions I had before I apply.

I'm sure you've noticed a nice big gap between July and September? Well I'm hoping to fill it with one or two more shows but I haven't found the right ones yet. My transportation options are limited because I can't drive (have to recruit family to help me) so it has to be local. Depending on how things go I might do a show or two during the holidays but that's too far in the future right now to know.

Now I have to plan the supplies I need to get. My canopy has worn out so I need a new one (and not so cheap and flimsy this time), another table because 2 wasn't enough space last year, stuff for displays, etc. Shows are fun but they are a whole lot of work.

New Line of Squid Jewelry

2009-03-18T15:05:00.000-04:00

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

Facebook and Octopus

2009-02-27T14:55:00.000-05:00

Fun bit of octopus news, an octopus in California caused a flood. The aquarium also has a flickr set of the event.

This of course leads to new octopus jewelry. I now have a good bit of the new line up on my Etsy Shop.

I recently got a big new order of supplies so lots of new jewelry is in the works including some cephalopods in pure silver! Trying to expand Noadi's Art into new areas and this higher end line of jewelry is the first step.

Last night I set up a facebook page for Noadi's Art so you can become a fan if you'd like.

Feeling Warm and Fuzzy

2009-02-16T16:35:00.002-05:00

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

2009-02-03T13:00:00.000-05:00

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

Cool T-Shirt

2009-01-21T18:45:00.003-05:00

This actually arrived in the mail a little while ago but this is the first time I've had a chance to take a photo of me wearing my new Noadi's Art t-shirt. I used Zazzle to create and print the shirt. The quality is quite nice and it cost me about $20 because I waited until Zazzle was having a sale.

You can see the design I used to the right, it's my cup of cuttlefish photo. I think it'll be especially nice to wear for art and craft shows this summer.

So here's the photo of me wearing the shirt, along with my new telescope. Click through to go to a larger version on Flickr.

If you read my last post you know that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy
and sicne I'm such an astronomy fan I created a cuttlefish necklace in honor of the IYA. Check out the Galactic Cuttlefish Necklace.

Been Distracted Lately

2009-01-11T21:35:00.001-05:00

Lots of non-Noadi's Art stuff going on right now. For the most part good though I did have a minor crises with my contact lenses that left me with only one for about a week (my eyesight is terrible so it really messed up my vision). My brother is home on leave from the Air Force for the month, this is the first time he's been home in a year. I also got a big new toy:

It's a 4.5 inch reflecting telescope and a dream come true. I've wanted a telescope since I was a little kid and with my parents chipping in half the cost as an Xmas present I could finally afford one. Unfortunately I do live in Maine so it's incredibly cold this time of year but I've been risking the frostbite anyway.

I do have some great Noadi's Art news coming up soon, I promise.

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T19:10:00.000-05:00

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.

Running out of time to order

2008-12-18T13:35:00.001-05:00

If you want to order anything from Noadi's Art for Christmas I must receive all orders by tonight. I plan to be up until at least 2am EST Friday morning packing up orders. After my mail run Friday morning I really can't guarantee anything I mail out will arrive by Christmas.

If you want to order after today please either email me directly at NoadiArt@gmail.com, convo me on Etsy, or use the "Ask the seller a question" link on eCrater and we can discuss expedited shipping which I'll need to invoice you for. Expedited shipping is generally quite pricey so please if you want to save some money, order today.