Sea Glass and Silver Chain

I made a chain, la la la la laaaaaaaa! Ok, so I haven't finished yet; there is more to add and lots of tidying up to do but yay! I'm working hard on new pieces for somewhere new which I'll be able to tell you about next week!

Congratulations Sian Bostwick

Great news from the very talented Sian Bostwick who has been announced as one of three finalists for the London Clothes Show Young Accessory Designer of the Year!

Check out her Facebook page for more photos and you can read more about Sian here.

Many Congratulations Sian!

Vintage Car Rally at Paxton House

Yesterday we went to Paxton House . . .

and saw lots of vintage cars . . .

combined with some glorious outfits and precarious music making in the sunshine.

'Twas fabulous darling!

David Hockney at Berwick Gymnasium Gallery

This morning we went to Berwick Gymnasium Gallery to see the exhibition of David Hockney's etchings inspired by a selection of Grimm's Fairy tales combined with an exhibition of local children's book illustrators. It was my first visit to the gallery and it is, may I say in my ponciest manner, such a fabulous space!

It was an odd experience looking at a series of images of a story I know and then moving on to one I didn't; moving from recognition to curiosity with just a few footsteps. Fortunately the gallery provided story books so I read them and went on another tour of the prints. 'The Rose and the Rose Stalk' illustration for Fundevogel was one of my favourites with the light cross hatching on the petals looking like woven fabric.

The front of the gallery housed the children's book illustrations and it was really well presented to give you an idea of the artists' work in progress. I was particularly taken with the little moles from Vanessa Cabban's illustrations for Bringing Down the Moon shown below.

The exhibition runs until the 27th June so you'd better hurry if you want to catch it!

Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood

Marvellous Margaret Atwood.

Sea Pottery and Sterling Silver

This pretty little sea pottery pendant is attached to a sterling silver snake chain with . . . a soldered closed sterling silver jump ring! After a few attempts the soldering is working, yay!

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

I'm afraid I didn't really engage with either voice in this book finding them a little repetitive, although, making a living from stuff you collect from the beach you say? Interesting.

Kit's Wilderness by David Almond

Yes, I went back for more. I might even have to request titles that aren't there but am concerned the librarian might tell me I can bring my kids to the library and they can have a card of their own.

Ah sure, I can't be the only 'grown up' who loves David Almond.

Soldering Jewellery

Last week was all about the drilling, this week I've been tackling soldering as it will be essential for my new designs. It took a bit of getting used to, especially the insulated tweezers which felt back to front compared to jewellery pliers squeezing to open not close, and I could really do with an extra arm at times! I've got the hang of it now but thought I'd share a small disaster when I eased my grip on the tweezers forgetting that this would squeeze the piece tighter rather than release it!


I'd been trying to hold the jump ring as closed as possible so the join would be extra secure but it really didn't work!

The last couple of weeks I've had such a buzz over learning so many new things! Terminology and skills which were completely alien are starting to sink in and it feels good.

Being able to solder will let me realise design ideas I've been ruminating over for months and, whilst it seems like no big deal, I am really pleased to be developing this skill!

I looked at starter kits and eventually settled on buying the essentials separately as I already have a torch from working with art clay. So for the jewellers out there who would like to have a go the basics you will need are:

• solder (soft, medium and hard if you need to solder more than one join on a piece, probably just hard if you are only going to buy one type)
• metal sheers or wire snips to cut the solder
  
• heat proof soldering block
• flux (borax cone and dish is probably the cheapest option)
• cross-locking insulated tweezers
• torch (I've got a handy butane one)
  
• pickle and ceramic or glass pot (I went for safety pickle and still turned my tights powdery yellow when it splashed!)
• copper tongs
  
• water in glass dish / jar

There are lots of good videos about equipment and techniques online to help you out, the Art Jewellery Magazine ones were particularly helpful.

Good luck!

New Sea Pottery Jewellery

New sea glass and sea pottery jewellery.

I love finding patterned pieces of pottery like this little brown flower and even have a pretty patterned piece waiting to be used which has a little brown dog on it! Today has been mainly computer based but accounts and website have been updated; I have had to fix a very dumb error as on the bottom of every page of website is a copyright notice but, thanks to the Google webmaster tool, I realised I'd forgotten the 'y'. Now copyright is spelt correctly! Phew.

Recycled bezel set sea glass is happening in an experimental fashion and I'm just waiting on a back order of solder to appear in the arms of our cheery postman, then I'll show you how it is working out, hopefully soon!

Celestial Navigation by Anne Tyler

"One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones people will never know about."

Anne Tyler in 'Celestial Navigation'

This Week

This week I've been drilling lot of pieces of sea glass and pottery, completed my tax return, ordered more needed supplies, had a lovely evening with the Johnsons, made some back plates for bezels, had an order for the pendant below in sterling silver, applied for inclusion in Craft Scotland and tried to go for a run. I say tried to go for a run because it was a bit of a fail! I went out intending to do just a short one as I haven't been running regularly for about a year but when I got to the point I should have turned back I just kept going as I knew there was a loop I could take and it feels better to run a loop rather than to a point and back. So I kept going and then, after the third hill I had to admit defeat and walk for a bit. Slightly shocked that my stop watch was heading up to an hour I realised the loop I thought was just a couple of miles was considerably more. When I returned I snooped on map my run and turns out it was 5 miles! It will take me a while to build back up to that again, especially with those hills!

This morning R and I went out on the bikes and did the same route, only the other way round, stopped at the bridge to go down to the river and had a wee plodge in the sunshine. Beautiful smile inducing morning; I love living here! Back home for an afternoon of sanding and football.

FIFA World Cup 2010

And so it begins!

Northern Ireland didn't quite make it despite a marvellous campaign but I'll still be watching the tournament, hope you all enjoy!

Who are you supporting?

lauracameron.co.uk

Let me introduce you to lauracameron.co.uk my very own little slice of cyberspace! Now I have a little place to call my own and collect together my jewellery, painting and photography all in one place. Today is the day I decided to make the site public, however, as a fluid site to be regularly updated with new work you will see some sections are fuller than others!

I'm very excited about the site and have a further list of developments for it including a newsletter sign up section which I'm working on and, of course, new jewellery, paintings and photographs!

Hope you like it and, please, if you do spot any whopping errors, do let me know, I can take it!

For now I'm going to enjoy a bit of web free time and have a go with the new drill chuck R's Dad made for me to hold teeny tiny drill bits, clever man!

Jackdaw Summer by David Almond

I know I've been saying I'm so busy on the website (news of which will wing your way tomorrow!) and yet there are many posts for my book list recently, but they are from when we had just moved and had no internet, hadn't unpacked any tools or materials and so couldn't be getting on with much work!

David Almond is a fabulous writer and even though I have become the woman who gets children's books out of the library, I care not. Since discovering him through the ravings of our PGCE tutor I have been enchanted and read Skellig with just about every year 7 class I taught! One of my favourite schemes of work at my old school was devised with an Art teacher and we combined forces for some cross curricular Skellig action; it was ace and the students produced some brilliant work! Many of Almond's stories are set in North Northumberland and I was struck with a memory of one of them driving along the road and thought I'd have a wee look in the library for any more.

Jackdaw Summer is another brilliant story and, yes, I read it surrounded by many jackdaws flying around the trees and chimney pots and felt very glad that we had caged and capped our chimney pots or by now we would have a very noisy wall!