Hi, I'm Noelie

I'm the polish maker behind Dreamland Lacquer, and the artist behind Whimsy Workshop.

Everyone keeps asking me why this, and why now. So, here's the scoop.

Earlier this year, I started to get interested in the idea of turning some of my art into 3D printable objects. I didn't realize that I was fumbling my way into something that was the confluence of a bunch of different skills that I already had, and that I'd turn out to be really good at it.

My grandmother ran a ceramics shop when I was growing up - not like a pottery shop, but like 1970s ceramic figures poured into molds and baked in a kiln. I had a paintbrush in my hand from the time I could walk, and drawing soon followed. This masterpiece is from 1973, and when I was trying to find it recently, I told my husband, "It's got to be the size of my head" - I was right.

I started drawing when I was eight, and I got pretty serious about colored pencils when I was in high school. I've done a lot of 2D art in other traditional mediums, including acrylic, watercolor, and markers.

I started doing pixel art in MS Paint, and that ignited the fire to learn digital art too. I taught myself Photoshop and Painter in the late 90s, using the cheapest used Wacom tablet I could find on eBay. I started editing existing meshes for The Sims, and before I knew it I was also dabbling in Milkshape and creating custom furniture. I even had my own Yahoo! Group back in the day for my creations.

I also started working with polymer clay in the late 90s, starting with beads and then quickly moving on to sculpting little figures. I had these little folks that I called Weezards and Weetches, basically tiny gnome wizards and witches. My brother and I were vendors at the Louisiana Renaissance Festival for their inaugural year in 2000 selling my little figures and his handmade jewelry. It was early internet days and it was hard to get a foothold back then for handmade goods, so life moved on and I stopped sculpting with any regularity for a long time - I'd pull the clay out occasionally, but it hasn't been feeling right for a while.

So, my first love has always been figural artwork - I love painting figurines, and I love drawing and painting people - or at least humanoids. When I got interested in 3D modeling, I thought I'd have someone else take my drawings and design models for me. The people that I tried to enlist to help me weren't interested, and I had the dangerous thought... how hard could it be?

Well, dear reader.... It was in fact surprisingly hard.

The learning curve was so steep it was nearly vertical. The software makes my computer chug as it screams that it is too old for this. But somewhere along the way, as I learned how to coax my figures out of my imagination and into the software, the principles of anatomy and modeling that I used in the real world quickly began to take shape for me in the digital world. I printed so many prototypes. I analyzed the problem areas, and I've learned how to improve the models for better printing results. I'm so happy with where they are now.

I've said for a decade that I wanted a kiln, but lack of space, etc. But in a very real sense, this 3D printer is the kiln that works for me right now. I'm able to create the little figures that have been in my head for more than 2 decades, in a medium that doesn't actually look all that different from my beloved polymer clay. And I'm over the moon that I don't have ceramic dust and/or clay under my nails to go with the polish making mess.