Drilling Sea Glass

Good afternoon!

I have been doing a bit if experimenting with drilling sea glass as a way of using some beautiful finds that are do not have smooth edges.

With the larger drill bits and extra vibrations I was having trouble holding the shards still. So, my ingenious father in law made me a clamping device complete with reservoir to keep the shard submerged in water while drilling.

Yesterday was the first go with it and it was successful! Next up is further tidying up of the little glass rounds and making new jewellery with them. It will be two pendants and a ring first I think.

Making Memories in the Chaos

Tomorrow, we will be running a new 'five senses' session at Paxton House on request of a local nursery. There are so many possible activities to do around the topic and I'm hoping to make it a regular visit option for early years out of school education.

I really wanted to make some scented play dough and thanks to a school friend, Karen, I have been working away on getting a stack ready. Karen writes a facebook page called Making Memories in the Chaos which is jam packed with wonderful ideas for activities to do with children.  Karen introduces herself as:

A stay at home mum sharing some of the mayhem from life with 3 kiddies under 3 years old :-) Before becoming a mum I was a P1 teacher, KS1 co - ordinator and Creative Arts Co -Ordinator. So, a lot of the stuff we do stems from then!

Her ideas are creative, fun and designed to support a child's development. If you have kids I highly recommend a look for some inspiration! I particularly like the ideas for Starting the Day in a Happy Way and Rhymers are Readers!

Now, back to the play dough kneading for me!

Green Sea Glass Earrings

New in the shop! Pretty deep green sea glass and recycled sea glass earrings.

I love green. Even though I spent my formative teenage years forced to wear a bottle green uniform to school I ended up loving the school and green! It is on my list to make a pair of sea glass earrings fro myself and I might go green. Also on the list is to make a weeny stacker ring to wear with my wedding ring when I feel like being a bit fancy but which colour of glass. Hmm, I'll see which find takes my eye! R and I are having a road trip down the coast this weekend and I'm hoping for some interesting finds.

Love for my Sister

It is my beautiful sister's birthday today and sadly I can't be with her as she is all the way in Kurdistan.  This is the only picture of us together on the day I married Rich; I am so grateful to our good friend and photographer Rich Spencer for capturing this as in all the bustle of the day we never got the chance for a cheesy pose together!

I adore this photo; Lynne did so much to help us get ready for our wedding right down to tying my shoes for me! I love that woman and really hope she is having a happy birthday all those many miles away!

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!