Scottish Borders Christmas Gift Guide

Having spent the last two years running a gallery I have had the immense pleasure of encountering loads of wonderful creative work. As it is coming up to Christmas I thought fellow Scottish Borders folk might appreciate a brief list of who is making gorgeous gift ideas and where they can buy them.

This list is by no means comprehensive so please don't be offended if I've missed individuals or venues out; there is a distinct lean to the Eastern Borders )and Berwick) as that's where I'm based.

Galleries

If you want to support local artists and give handmade gorgeousness this Christmas I highly recommend checking out our wealth of galleries. Many of the galleries will be running winter opening hours so it's worth checking out their websites for opening times. 

For paintings, printmaking, photography, furniture, wood, sculpture, ceramics, glass, jewellery, cards and even gift vouchers do check out our local galleries.

First up, The White Fox Gallery is taking over our gallery space on the High Street in Coldstream and up until Christmas Stephen and Virginie will have both the High Street and Hirsel galleries open. 

Number Four Gallery in beautiful St Abbs houses a huge range of contemporary arts and crafts plus you get the chance to go for a stunning coastal walk when you visit! If you are heading this way on a Friday make sure you pop into the St Abbs Market at the Ebba Centre too.

Kinsman-Blake Gallery, Smailholm, near Kelso, hosts the work of the Kinsman-Blake family including pottery, wood, jewellery, paintings and print making.

The Flat Cat Gallery, Lauder also has a lovely cafe to enjoy when you visit, or if you can't make it in person they have just started selling online.

The Crafters, Market Square, Melrose, hosted by a core group of makers with different guests showing work each month.

Not far from the Crafters is the brand new Melrose Gallery which opened last month.

Julia Linstead Glass Gallery, the Hirsel, Coldstream, home of Julia's workshop and a whole array of glass wonders.

Photographer and framer Ian Oliver at Tweedside Gallery, Newtown St Boswells.

Chirnside Gallery and Framers.


Online Shops

If you are shopping for festive gifts from the comfort of your own home here are a few Scottish Borders and Northumberland based artists and makers with web shops.

Wildlife artist Hannah Longmuir whose calendars make a lovely present.

Dave Watson and Morag Eaton of Foldyard Studios in Berwick-upon-Tweed have a selection of artist prints available to buy online.

Harris Tweed textile art, print and cards from Bright Seed Textiles.

Jeweller Fiona Luing makes beautiful jewellery with prices starting at under £10.

Prints from artist Sylvia Quinn Home.

Orwell and Goode the fabulous creators of home decor, art prints, fabric and accessories.

Kiki's Chocolate is delicious!

Beautiful beasties from Linda Lovatt.


Workshops

For those who would prefer to gift an experience it is possible to choose from a wide range of visual art and creative writing workshops for all ages at Allanbank Arts, near Allanton.

Maybe you know somebody who would like to make a willow chair, a rustic stool or carve spoons, all available at The Big Tree Society, Buy Design Gallery, Harestanes.

Weaving workshops in Swinton with Janis Embleton.


Mill Pond Flower Farm has an online shop where you can order flowers for local delivery, heirloom silk ribbon, natural dyed fabric and you can also book onto two flower farming workshops.

Lastly, for something a bit different; for the drivers there are gift vouchers available for 4x4 experiences or training with Farx4

Crossing Borders Exhibition at Coldstream Gallery

The lovely Coldstream Gallery is hosting its annual Crossing Borders Exhibition featuring work by artists working all over the Borders.  It is a great chance to see a variety of work from members of the artist collective all in one venue and Rich and I are happy to be exhibiting there.

Calendulas by Rich Johnson

detail of work by Niall Campbell

Laura Johnson Sea Glass, Pottery and Recycled Silver Jewellery

 To see more from the exhibition pop on over to Coldstream Gallery's facebook page and give them a like!

The Stone Wall Gallery: Olivia Lomenech Gill

Last week saw the opening of a beautiful new gallery, The Stone Wall Gallery near Preston, Duns.  The opening exhibition features work by Charles Poulsen and Olivia Lomenech Gill.

I first saw Olivia Lomenech Gill's work at Charlie and Pauline's open studio in August. I don't think I've ever blogged about it yet. Rich and I have gone to Allanbank Mill Steading every year since we moved and find inspiration each time in the work exhibited and from the artists themselves.

The first encounter was War Horse. Beautiful, large scale etching in response to and for Michael Morpurgo's writing? One glance and I was entranced, even more so having had a chance to look again. Layered, textured, emotive.

  

Image courtesy of the artist and The Stone Wall Gallery website

One of my fondest memories of teaching was sitting on the windowsill at the back of my class room reading with my classes. On one occasion I was perched aloft and finishing Morpurgo's Private Peaceful  with my year 9s. In those days year 9 was all about national curriculum testing and levels. I hated that fact, they hated that fact and it was a joy to be able to share a novel with them, to explore, respond and enjoy. They were marvelous. So, reaching the final few pages of a book that has reduced me to weeping my voice wavered a little. A certain student, who was fully capable of being a challenge, raised his hand and quietly asked, 'Miss, would like me to finish reading for you?'

And now, I've had the chance to see this beautiful work and even have a selection of my rings in the same exhibition.  This makes me happy.

Crossing Borders Art Trail 2013

The Crossing Borders annual open studio event, the Art Trail, is nearly upon us!

Split over two weekends to allow visitors to explore a large area, artists across the borders will fling open their doors for you to come and see their work, chat, get involved and have a good day out!

If you haven't picked up your guide yet you can download a digital copy and pick up a paper copy at your first venue.

Dates for the Art Trail for 2013 are:-

• West - FRIDAY 30th August to SUNDAY 1st September
• East - FRIDAY 6th to SUNDAY 8th September

Rich and I will both be at Allanbank Arts with Gill Walton, Hannah Longmuir and Richard Oldale on the 6th, 7th and 8th of September. The venue will be open 10am to 5pm each day and I am running a morning 10am-12pm and afternoon 2pm-4pm drop in workshop each day. For just £5, to cover the cost of materials, you can try your hand at wire wrapping your beach finds to create a necklace or earrings.  It takes about half an hour to create a piece of jewellery and you are welcome to drop in for a workshop between 10am and 2pm or 2pm to 4pm. I have arranged it into two sessions after finding that I didn't get much chance to talk to other visitors when I ran workshops all day, not to mention failing to eat lunch or go for a wee!

Having gone on the trail as a visitor and participated as an artist last year I can highly recommend an arty jaunt around the borders! Do take a few minutes to plan your route, look out for the artists you are particularly interested in meeting or find out where you can do workshops. All the information is in the guide, including contact details for each artist if you need to ask anything beforehand.

I hope to see you on the trail!

Happenings

Well oh well, it is all very exciting over here as we prepare for the Art Trail. We have visited exhibitions...

Photographed and celebrated a joyous wedding...

 We had a visit from a lovely friend, celebrated Rich's birthday and in a delightful turn of events I will now be working at both number four gallery in St Abbs and Coldstream Gallery. Splendid! I have been thoroughly enjoying the galleries and will be bringing you a selection of my favourite pieces at the moment, I warn you, it may be a long list!

Sea Glass Pendants and Sumer Jobs

Hello, hello!

How are you all?

Things are rolling along well here working away on new pieces for the Crossing Borders Art Trail including a host of bezel set pendants like these ones which are in various stages of completion:

The blue on the top left is going to be oxidized so the texture on the copper stands out. I did a repair on a bracelet last week and forgot how much I love the blackened, textured look when you oxidize silver so there will be more.

The bracelet to be repaired was a very pretty Macintosh inspired piece and the roses were originally oxidized, however, after soldering and pickling as part of the repair the whole surface was back to silver. With a bit of liver of sulphur (pongs!) followed by polishing the bracelet was returned to its owner.  I dotted the liver of sulphur onto the roses directly(that's what you can see in the picture above) and then put the whole piece in warm water. This meant the whole bracelet became patinated, however it was more concentrated within the lines of the rose and then easy to buff off where the patina wasn't wanted.

So, yes, more textured, patinated work is on the way.

In other news I have a summer job! I will be working at the beautiful Number Four Gallery in St Abbs on Wednesdays so do come and say hello!  If you are longing for the sea and are on fb, following the gallery page might help with some beautiful pictures of St Abbs and the fabulous Art work too!

ReSide - Scotland / India Textile Residency

Calling all fans of textiles!

Some of you may know the Border Tart, well Lindsay is off on an adventure with knitwear designer Jenni Allison  as the Scottish part of the exchange and you can read all about their exciting adventures here .

I had the joy of meeting Swati and Murji who have been in Scotland for a month or so before heading back to India with Jenni and Lindsay. The group came over to Paxton House to have a look at the 18th century costume and the costumes created this year by fashion and textiles students at Heriot-Watt university.

photo courtesy of douglasmcbridephoto@mac.com

Such an exciting exchange and I look forward to hearing and seeing more!  

Changes in Season and Online

We've moved the living room into winter mode with the sofa closer to the fire place. The curtain over the front door has been pulled closed at night.  Wood has been chopped and the fire lit.  No sign of the first frost yet but it is autumnal and rather lovely to be at home.

Despite the roaring storms last week I am enjoying the season; we went to the beach to collect some glass today and got a good soaking. It filled me with joy for some reason. Possibly because it wasn't particularly cold out there and possibly because it's a blooming brilliant part of my working life.

Looking upstream and downstream near Allanton during last week's floods.

I do feel like I'm having to fight for time for my own work at the moment and my online presence is suffering. I've had such great support from customers online and I really don't want to lose that or let anybody down. I know nobody needs my bloggy rambling or to buy my work online, but it's important to me that the option is there; especially for people searching for ethical alternatives for jewellery purchases. And I simply want to make a living from my work and you, the people who read my blog, buy my work, attend workshops and chat with me are the ones who will make it happen and I thank you for that.

So, I've decided to go all out and change my online name; I've only been married a few months and am finding it confusing having two names! R was very happy for me to keep my maiden name but it was important to me to share his name. I was planning on keeping Cameron as a professional name, however, it suits me to just have one name what with being easily confused and all!  Over the next few months there will be changes; the first one being twitter as I figure out preferred domain names, website redesign etc.  It's exciting to be having a much needed re-vamp!  Hopefully by the new year it will all be done.  I will be concentrating on the festive build up getting extra pieces made so the website won't be making an instant appearance but I have been playing around with some designs.

In other news Hester kitten is getting bigger and Molly cat is marginally less angry about the whole situation.

Hester's first venture into the garden.

Speak to you soon!

*Thanks to R for the photos!

Crossing Borders Art Trail 2012

We have just finished our first ever open studio event as part of the Crossing Borders Art Trail.  The lovely people at the Chain Bridge Honey Farm kindly invited Rich, Tony and myself to set up there.  We had our art trail sheep pointing the way.

It was great to be able to set up at the Honey Farm as it is such a popular venue and over the weekend we had well over 150 people visit.  Rich and Tony had prints and paintings and I had a display of my recycled jewellery and a workshop table where visitors could make their own wire wrapped sea glass, pottery or pebble necklace.

Thank you to everyone who came over to see our work, buy pieces, chat and participate in workshops and to Felicity who brought in her rock tumbler for us to have a play with!

More photos over on the book of face.

Crossing Borders Art Trail

From Crossing Borders Facebook page

Rich and I are both taking part in the Crossing Borders Art Trail which is an annual Open Studio event run over two weekends.  First up artists in the Western side of the Borders, from about Peebles to Chesters and Jedburgh way and lots in between, will be opening their studios on Friday 31st August until Sunday 2nd September.  

The following weekend of Friday 7th to Sunday 9th September artists on the Eastern side of the Borders all the way over to Berwick upon Tweed will be participating.  This second weekend includes us!  Rich, his Dad and myself will be setting up our studio space in a wonderful room at the Chain Bridge Honey Farm.  We are so grateful to all at the Honey Farm for letting us use the space for the weekend and I'm getting really excited now!

The pressure is on to get a good selection of pieces finished, especially with having a second job and getting a reminder about a month long exhibition of my work over in Peebles which I'd shamefacedly forgotten about!  I got all in a rush and a panic yesterday and ended up bashing my finger with a large hammer which reminded me to calm down and just keep going steadily.

As well as my silver, copper, sea glass and pottery jewellery there will be a new range on show for the first time ever created in collaboration with my husband! Art Trailers you will have the first look!

Furthermore, I'll be running drop in workshops throughout the weekend if you would like to have a go at creating a wire wrapped pebble or sea glass necklace then come on over!

For more information on the Art Trail and to request a copy of the guide to plot your route around the artists go to http://www.crossing-borders.org.uk/about_us.php .  There are loads of guides out and about and I have some left so if you'd like one just let me know!

Sea Glass Jewellery Workshop

A few Saturdays ago I ran a workshop teaching a great group how to make jewellery with wire and sea glass; no drilling required.  It was fun and each participant made a pair of earrings and a pendant using wire wrapping techniques.

Thanks to Berwick Arts and Crafts Group for organising the festival and for some of these photos, I'm looking forward to seeing what's next from this new and exciting group!