Mid June Garden

Copper Star

This morning I was sawing out a star shape from a piece of recycled copper tubing. A the tube has been flattened I end up with two shaped pieces from one sawing session, which makes earrings a tad easier! The copper is tarnished and dull on the surface open to the air, however, as you saw you get lots of sparkly copper dust appearing.

Once the shape has been cut out there is usually a small hinge where the pipe is still joined which lets you prise apart the two shapes and have a look at what's inside. . .
This piece has a beautiful range of greens and once I've filed and sanded the edges I may well wax one star to maintain the patina and pickle the other to get a lovely clean copper.

Workroom Wednesday

This week's workroom photo brings you little copper hearts and dots sawn out of recycled copper water pipes being soldered onto sterling silver wire. These will form the base of two pairs of sea glass earrings, in fact, the dots have already been made up with dark cola brown coloured glass and they look rather autumnal. Must be all this rain we are having leading me towards thought of a cooler season!

Lily Lolo Mineral Make Up

Music videos and now make up reviews?! Have I transformed my blog into some sort of style magazine?!

No, no, no but I have discovered a make up I dig so I'm sharing it with you lovely people as I know some of you are interested in environmentally friendly living and this stuff helps.

Lily Lola mineral cosmetics have "achieved cult status by beautifully harmonising natural, chemical free ingredients with the ultimate in mineral based technology", have BUAV approval and are made in the UK.

I started investigating mineral make up after reading about the giant list of nasties in most regular liquid foundations and thought I really don't need to be slapping that crap on my face. Initial investigations led me to expensive brands and I let it drop. Then, when R asked me to marry him I inevitably started thinking wedding thoughts and wanting to look decent on the day seemed a good excuse to research a little further.

A few months ago I discovered Lily Lola and ordered the sample set pictured above which gives you three different colours of foundation, allowing you to colour match to your own skin before ordering, a face powder and a mini kabuki brush for application. I was quite excited to recieve the pretty box and even photoraphed a before and after to see how the make up looked. The foundation feels much lighter than the liquid foundation I was using and gives a much more natural look, I don't wear heavy make up so I liked this aspect a lot.

All very pleasing and I thought I would order a full size foundation in my shade of choice. However, the best was yet to come. Those of you in the UK may remember a few weeks ago we had heat. The sun came out for a week and it was delightful. Well, usually at such times I have to slap on the factor 50 and no matter what type of face sun cream I use I end up feeling slimy and get spotty. Bleugh. Whilst not having an official SPF rating Lily Lola mineral cosmetics do have natural sun protection and, having tentatively put it to the test I can confirm I did not burn even slightly! I feel like I have to put this in context of just how good this is with an example from a few years ago when I was one of the teachers on a Duke of Edinburgh exhibition in the Peak District, in the rain wearing an SPF moisturiser; I got sun burned apart from the nice white stripe across my forehead where my head band had been. Forshame.

Anyway, so the make up is grand stuff and not very expensive. A large pot of foundation costs £12.49 plus p&P and judging by the small amounts required at a time this should last a fair while. I highly recommend a peruse around the Lily Lolo website for more information, including a stack of useful videos on how to apply mineral make up.


I was so impressed I bought my sister the trial kit for her birthday. To offer balance to this review I must add that she is slightly less convinced of the merits of the make up because of the transformation of her artfully arranged boudoir into something from a low budget junkie film due to the spatterings of powdery residue decorating her dressing table.

Feist

I've had a bit of a Feist feast this week and she is splendid. This is the first Feist video I saw a number of years ago, it suited my mood at the time and the photography geek in me loved it instantly! I want to share all the videos with you at once - Sesame Street and toast with wings should be a part of life. However, I know we all have work to do, so just one for today, enjoy!

Workroom Wednesday

This picture was taken yesterday before the bangles had their final polish and were packaged up to be sent to Crown Studio, Rothbury. I do love them and it was nice to see four worn at once, very jangly! There are four more on the bench at the moment nearing completion and a stack of pretty sea glass droplets awaiting the drill.

Tomorrow is the last day of the PTLLS course and so I'll be done with essay writing just in time to get ready for a month of essay marking! I am trying not to panic and am so thankful for new opportunities which have appeared in the last week, I just hope I can get it all done!

This is about me done for today as it's netball night, time to run and leap around for a bit,

Good evening to you all xo

Recycled Silver

Hello!

I have been working away with my first delivery of recycled silver wire and am very happy with the supplier. If you are interested in using recycled silver you can order directly from Capella Ltd and I'm hoping to bring you further information on the company soon.

Arm Sculpture by Ute Decker

Last week Ute Decker's newsletter appeared in my inbox and included this little nugget:

Interested in Chain
in 100% Recycled Silver?

I have found a UK chain maker who would be willing to make chain in 100% recylced silver.

The more jewellers the cheaper the chain.

If you are interested, please send me an email with "Chain" in the subject line and roughly how many meters of chain you might need per quater or 6 month. Once I have more details I / the chain maker will get in touch with you.

Email: eco@utedecker.com
Subject: Chain

This would be an excellent step forward as fine chain is now the only part of my silver jewellery which is not made from recycled metal. If you are interested I hope you will email; offering ethical and environmentally friendly jewellery is not just a good thing for your business.

Workroom Wednesday

Bangles, a ring, some copper sea weed inspire shapes and a bezel set pendant on the go today. My delayed silver arrived special delivery this morning, hooray! Looking at this picture shows a lot of fluxy mess on the slate and bench, it looks like bird poo, but it's not, I promise. I must have a clean once I'm caught up on making.

Made in the Shade

The Made in the Shade girls have had a busy time of late fronting the new Nokia E7 Campaign and I love their pop up shop adventure! This video gives you brief overview but it is worth checking out each stop. The Chain Bridge Honey Farm isn't far from us and it's where you can see R's Dad's fabulous paintings, including a portrait of me! I must get a photo of that for you!

Jim Clark Rally 2011

A few snapshots from the Jim Clark Rally 2011. We could hear the roars up the road and couldn't resist a nosey!

Rainbow and Sea Glass

We've had a lot of rain and wind over the last week or so and even a few rainbows. Fortunately there has been no damage for us or our neighbours apart from a few flattened daisies and a timid little cat looking a uncertain of being outdoors.


Yesterday was finally a bit calmer and we went for a breath of fresh air and a poke around the beach. It is one of my favourite beaches nearby and even though we were only there about an hour we got a decent collection of glass and pottery and a pebble that looks like a thumb - look at the top left of the image below and use your imagination . . .
Some gorgeously smooth nuggets in green, aqua and white, a piece of pottery with the word 'SERVE' still visible and, if you look closely right in the centre of the photo, a tiny piece of purple glass. The purple is tiny and a bit rough around the edges but it is purple so I had to bring it home. I think it is the first piece of purple sea glass I have ever found and I'm going to have to find a use for it!

I am (still) waiting for my first delivery of recycled silver so it's all a bit slow at the workbench until it arrives. I have a number of pieces at various stages of completion which I can't do any more with until I've got the silver. I think my next order will be a year's supply to avoid these lengthy waits, ho hum, lesson learned.

National Vegetarian Week

Loads of events and recipes over on the National Vegetarian Week's website. Am going to explore the recipes now!

Education and Fire Power

It's been a week with an education focus with a trip down to the midlands for some training for a job I'm doing. It was great to catch up with some friends from the school I used to teach at who made up for having to sit on a train for ten hours just to attend a three hour meeting!

I've also been preparing assignments and a short lesson as part of the PTLLS course. I felt nervous teaching a small group of lovely people for twenty minutes which seems a bit daft given I've managed to teach large groups of teenagers I've never met before!



My workbench has been a bit quiet with all this other work and I am awaiting the first delivery of recycled silver before I can crack on with new pieces. I have been fiddling with my blog layout and did manage a bit of a play with the copper foil a kind lady from the PTLLS course brought in for me. I made an absolute shambles of it but I now get how it works and think, combined with jeweller's silver solder, this has huge potential. The photo shows the light coming through the glass and deliberately silhouettes my messy soldering!

I've also come to the realisation that I need a bit more fire power at the bench and will be investing in a new torch to speed up the soldering process. My current torch is perfect for small jobs, it is quick and precise, however, on larger pieces I am struggling to get the even heat required. A more powerful torch may mean a move to the garage for safety reasons so now I just have to work out how to make the garage a more usable space. No electricity or windows poses the main challenge!

Crossing Borders

Last week both R and I were delighted to be accepted as members of Arts group Crossing Borders and now have a selection of our work on display in the Crossing Borders Gallery at Paxton House.


If you are visiting the Scottish Borders, North Northumberland area, and interested in the Arts, the Crossing Borders website is a great place to start with information on artists and galleries in the area.


Please excuse the poor photographs, they were a rush job and I had to use flash. At various times over the next few months we'll be working at Paxton House, I'll let you know when. If you come and visit do say hello, I'm the one who looks like this!

Weekend

Last night's dander up the road treated us to a hazy sunset, frolicking hares and twittering birds. Today, the lovely Naomi of Amelee Jewellery took me up to the Edinburgh Bead Fair which was a fab day out. I treated myself to a few small purchases so expect to see a wee bit of moonstone with my sea glass! There were some impressive demonstrations by the folks who teach up at The Little Bead Shop in Edinburgh and I had a very helpful chat with Jared Sanders with tips to help me speed up and improve my sawing technique.

This evening our kitchen looks like the picture above: cultivating alien life forms or attempting to grow wedding flowers? It's up to you to decide.

Goatscrag Hill and Roughting Linn

The Cheviots from Goatscrag; taken straight into the sun so do excuse the big sun spots in the sky. We went down to Roughting Linn last week on what turned out to be the last day of the lovely sunny weather. A bit of striding in the great outdoors was spirit liftingly splendid.

I didn't take any pictures of the markings in the rock as there was a man there informing us about the supposed connections with lady parts ('you'd know more about that than me, eh?') but you can see a variety of images here. Interesting to note the erosion in just the last thirty years and to wonder whether they are in any way protected?

Having a sit down and a drink at the top of Goatscrag and watching R taking photos I did think to myself that this beats the arse of being in school on a Wednesday morning.