Blue Sea Glass Jewellery

Hello!

I have been listing a number of blue sea glass jewellery pieces in my shop including

 A blue sea glass and recycled sterling silver bangle

 and this pendant which features a deep blue piece of sea glass set in recycled sterling silver. It's one of my favourites of late, probably because I don't often find such well smoothed blue sea glass. I created a circular hole in the back of the silver setting so the light shines through showing the depth of the blue colour.

Lastly my large blue sea glass and recycled sterling silver ring sold in the week and I'm very happy it's gone off to its new home. Am also slightly relieved by an online sale meaning that after all the tinkering things are working, phew!

Number 6 Photography

Rich and I have been doing some wedding, event and lifestyle photography over the last few years and have set up a facebook page to share our work.  We are Number 6 Photography!

Rich Johnson, Art at Ancrum

A quick shot of some or Rich's work at Art at Ancrum. He is teaching for a term at the moment and the weekend was the first chance he'd had to do any drawing for ages. He loved it and produced another Salty Dog which has a new home already!

I love his drawings and this one especially because of the serendipitous 'surly' on the sea chart just above his right shoulder, splendid!

Art at Ancrum 2013

This weekend sees the first Art at Ancrum event from Friday 3rd May until Monday 6th May featuring work from a host of local professional artists and crafts people.

 

There are quite a few Crossing Borders artists involved including Mr Johnson with new paintings and drawings. 

Rich will be there on the Saturday and Sunday if you would like to meet him and have a chat about his work; he'll probably be the one with a sketchbook and pencil!

By Laura Johnson

There has been tweaking and fiddling and how-on-earth-does-this-work-gurning but now www.bylaurajohnson.com is live again!

There will continue to be meddling from me and in the meantime if anything is dodgy looking, spelled incorrectly, or just wrong please let me know!

I promised myself I'd be done by 1pm and am an hour over but lunch can be an on the run one today!

Hooray!

So, in my absence from this blog life has looked a bit like this...

Return of the Wandering Artist

Hello,

How are you?

I've decided to come back to this lovely space of bloggery and turn it into my website.  There are various reasons but mainly I want to have a website, blog and place to sell my work online all in one site and, with a bit of tinkering under the bonnet, I think I can do that here.  Sadly, I have been hanging around waiting for software updates on my current site builder to the detriment of my website and it's time to move on.

So, hello again and do excuse the work in progress look over the next few weeks.  While I fiddle around in the background I am going to transfer the few posts created on my other website and soon normal service will return! I'll post address details once domain names have been successfully transferred but for now you can find me, and my much missed blog archive on http://bylaurajohnson.blogspot.co.uk

Ahh, it's good to be back!

By Laura Johnson

Hello all!

Due to my ownership of www.lauracameron.co.uk expiring very soon I am switching to my new website now! I had planned to launch in the new year to give plenty of time to design and stock the new website but I don't want to renew a domain name for just a few months.

So, after a busy afternoon I have the bones of my new website and blog all wrapped up in one handy place. I know it is tedious to follow me on to somewhere new but I really hope you will come visit at:

www.bylaurajohnson.com

Thank you for hanging out with me here right from the very beginnings of my creative venture, leaving teaching, moving to Scotland and now marrying the writer!  Thank you for your comments, chats and encouragement, see you on the new site!

UPDATE: This site is now live again! Hoorah! April 2013

Laura Johnson

The name changing continues and during the website re-design my main shop is over on Folksy at http://folksy.com/shops/byLauraJohnson.  

Today I've been trying out polishing silver using polishes and mops. I have been put off going for this due to standard polishes having animal products in them and, as a vegetarian I wasn't going to use them.  However, I found a range of polishing compounds which contain no animal and so far so good.  Once I get the better control over my multi tool and avoid nicking the metal with the actual tool I'll have super shiny silver suitable for vegetarians!

Hope you are all having a great weekend!

Blue Sea Glass Rings

Two ready-to-polish blue sea glass and recycled sterling silver rings.  I love them stacked together like this and have been sorting through glass to make more in greens and aquas.  Yum.

Garden Pottery

I was approached about making a pendant using a piece of blue willow found in the customer's garden.  A really lovely piece and I wish I had taken a decent picture!

I've used a solid silver back for greater stability and as, unlike the glass, there is no benefit from letting the light come through the back.  Working with sheet silver is great and I've started two little bezel settings for sea glass rings which I'll get the chance to finish later on in the week.

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!

Hester

 We have a new beast in the house; a little tabby girl of just nine weeks old.

The list of potential names grew ever longer until we spotted the letter A she has; ginger on one side, black on the other.  So, Hester it is and she is beautiful.

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!