The truth is I came across Flipside because I was looking for somewhere to learn to ride my unicycle. (Yes, I have one, and I had tried to ride it on and off, and hadn’t quite gotten it together.) I was looking online (as you do) and found this fabulous circus space, just around the corner from where I live!
Flipside is a not-for-profit, community based organisation who provide an extensive circus program with an exciting range of circus activities geared around empowering children.
Its primary goal is providing a fun, non-competitive and safe environment for young people to build their strength, fitness, coordination and self-confidence through learning basic circus skills.
I enrolled my son straight away. We love our weekly fun at Flipside, all our lovely trainers are so kind, gentle and patient with the children, and it’s marvellous to watch the little ones blossoming and gaining confidence each week. Even the littlies get to go on the trapeze, the tissu, the tightrope and the tramp – just like the bigger kids. There are heaps of different activites each time, and we both get so much out of it (if you’re taking your little one, grown-ups can join in too!)
On 9 December, Flipside Circus held their annual Flipside Fiesta – a fun fundraising day for all their circus families. I was very happy to support Flipside with a Silver Forge raffle prize donation – the winner of the prize received a custom handcrafted ring, made by yours truly. More on that later!
The unicycle? Well, I still haven’t managed to master that just yet, but Flipside do run classes for adults, so if I can schedule my family around it, that might be my next adventure!! 🙂
Czech Glass beads (also known as Bohemian Glass or Druk beads) were created in Bohemia as early as 250 BC. Handmade glass beads have been found in graves excavated from the 10th century. In the 13th century, glass factories were opened in the northern mountains. In the 16th century, a cottage industry of glassmakers providing glass beads to the larger jewelry factories began in the Bohemian cities of Jablonec, Stanovsko and Bedrichov.
In the 19th century, no doubt spurred on by the industrial revolution, manufacturers developed special molds and machines to produce pressed-glass beads. Czech bead-making suffered setbacks because of the two World Wars, the Great Depression and Communist rule. Today, the industry has been revived, and Czech bead makers are again among the world leaders in bead manufacturing and exports.
Czech glass beads are available in a variety of colors and finishes. They come in opaque and solids, transparent, metallic and two-tone.
How are these beads are made today? Well, glass cane rods are heated to a molten level and put into a pressing machine. The hot glass is then pressed into molds. A needle is inserted at the same time to produce the thread hole of the bead. After the pressed glass is molded it slowly cools. At this point, the beads are connected by excess glass around the edges. The pressed glass beads are placed into a tumbling cycle that will break off the excess glass. The beads will then be sent through another tumbling process that will smooth out imperfections and polish the beads.
I love working with Czech Glass beads, not only because of the never-ending array of beautiful colours, shapes, sizes and opacities, but because of their fabulous history! I also love that they are glass, which as a natural substance has an elegance and timelessness about it.
At the moment, I’m having to restrain myself from buying a stack more Czech Glass beads to add to my already sizeable stash… willpower!!
Which is your favourite of the Czech glass beads in these pictures? Do you wish The Silver Forge had other colours available? (Encouragement to fulfill my shopping dreams will always be appreciated! 🙂 )
Reading – it’s probably my number one favourite thing to do. Ever. Who doesn’t love to curl up on the couch with a cup of tea and a good book? I read morning, noon and night. It’s a miracle that I get anything else done in a day, really!!! Anyway, at the moment, I’m devouring reading “Twenty Chickens for a Saddle” by Robyn Scott. It is a memoir of Robyn’s life as a child, growing up in Botswana, Africa.
As well as many entertaining and amusing anecdotes about her family (swimming in crocodile infested rivers? Being home-schooled in a most unorthodox fashion by their mother? Running an egg selling business, using rescued ‘past their use by date’ battery hens, to fund a new saddle?), Robyn manages to impart – in a way that is completely engaging and without overloading you -a great deal of information about a number of potentially politically touchy subjects, including the AIDS epidemic, and the scary and dangerous beliefs that some of the African people have about HIV.
I haven’t even finished the book yet (plans for that later today!) but I just had to let you know that I was excited enough to tweet about it yesterday, and was surprised and thrilled to receive a tweet from Robyn in reply, letting me know about a great organisation she helped found, Mothers For All.
Mothers For All are non-profit, supporting women in Botswana and South Africa who care for children orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS. Mothers For All has this to say:
“Every mother hopes, should something happen to her, someone will be there to both care for and love her children as she did. But in sub-Saharan Africa millions of mothers have little or no means of ensuring this. Of the 15 million children under 18 years who have been orphaned as a result of AIDS worldwide, 12 million live in sub-Saharan Africa.” (figures from 2009).
I think this probably resonates with all of us – I can’t think of anything more awful than not being there for my children, and not knowing that they would be safe and cared for if I were to die. So, what started as a gentle book read has morphed into a worthy cause to support. Like me, perhaps you could take a few minutes to read the website, and perhaps make a donation or purchase one of the lovely bead pieces, handmade by the mothers of the project.
Perhaps you could become an activist for Mothers For All, or simply use whatever social media you’re comfortable with to promote this very worthy cause!
The term “drusy” comes from the word “druse”, which refers to a rock surface (usually a cavity) covered with tiny individual crystals, such as are found inside geodes or in larger pockets of mineral deposits.
Drusy crystals take hundreds or even thousands of years to form. They form as molten rock begins to cool with trapped gases inside. The gases cause gaps in the rock. As ground water carrying dissolved silica is forced into a porous area of the rock for century after century, tiny crystals form on the surfaces or in cavities of the rock, forming a blanket of crystals.
These rocks are split open to reveal the crystals within. Cabochons are then cut from the surface of the rock capturing the drusy elements.
The most commonly found drusy is quartz (agate or chalcedony), but many other species can exist in this form.
Naturally colored quartz drusy is found almost exclusively in muted colors such as white, grey, tan and cream. Many quartz pieces, though, are dyed black or other vivid colors such as purple, red, green and blue, and some are coated with titanium or other metallic vapor which creates various iridescent finishes. You can read more about gemstone treatments here.
I love working with drusy, because as well as being incredibly beautiful, no piece is ever the same!
Some of the pieces shown here are available for sale in my online shop. I am currently only working with natural stones, which I am happy to custom-make into rings or pendants similar to the ones shown here if you would like one. Do contact me for a quote, won’t you!!
The oldest surviving structure in Queensland is right here in Brisbane, in the City. It is a windmill, built by convicts from the penal settlement at Moreton Bay.
There is an interesting story behind this structure. I think many a convict would have rued the building of it; not only would it have been hard slog to create it, but it was, in part, powered by a treadmill trodden by convicts as punishment!
The Moreton Bay Song, a traditional Australian song from the pen of convict, Frank McNamara, was written in celebration of the death of Captain Patrick Logan, former commander of the Moreton Bay convict settlement, who oversaw this windmill. I remember singing the song in choir in primary school. Little did I know that one day I would be living in the area and seeing this fantastic old building!
So, a thought for those who came before us, and their hardships and trials – especially those pioneers, both intentional and through circumstance, who shaped our country into the great place it is to live today!!
After I wrote my first “photo prop” blog post about the piece of rock that I found in Egypt, I got to wondering about this black and white stone, and what it actually was.
When I was 13, my family and I travelled to England (en route to France where we lived for a while). While visiting my great-aunt, who lived in the little village of Storrington in Sussex, we went for a traipse on the South Downs. At that age, I don’t suppose I was thrilled with the prospect, but I found this special stone (the prop at the back, not the pendant at the front…), which has travelled from home to home with me ever since! Yes, I confess to being a bit of a hoarder of nature…
A quick email to my mum later, to find out where we would have been walking, (thank goodness for her memory..mine just doesn’t stretch to things like that!!) and a quick Google later, I can tell you that it is flint, surrounded by limestone chalk.
(Now, thanks to the South Downs National Park Authority and The Bournemouth University, comes the history lesson… do fast forward the boffin part if you’re not that into it!! :))
125 million years ago, the south east of England was a low-lying landscape covered by a large shallow freshwater lake with several rivers flowing into it. These rivers carried vast amounts of clay or mud, which started to build up in layers on the bed of the lake. The freshwater lake was home to massive prehistoric reptiles such as the Iguanadon and the Plesiosaurus. Eventually the clays reached a thickness of nearly 200 metres, forming the first layer known as the Weald Clay.
The land continued to sink until eventually the ocean broke in laying down massive layers of sand known as Lower Greensand. The sea gradually deepened and the waters became still. Under these conditions, a thick dark mud collected known as Gault Clay. After this period, there were strong underwater currents in the sea and the sandier sediments of the Upper Greensand were deposited.
97 million years ago, the sea began to lay down the chalk of the South Downs. Chalk is a white soft limestone, which has been formed from the skeletons of marine creatures deposited, squeezed and eventually fossilised on the sea-bed. This process continued for 20 million years and to a thickness of more than 300 metres. Chalk contains visible fossils of creatures that lived in the sea 90 million years ago, including ammonites, sea urchins and fish sponges.
Flint occurs naturally within the upper chalk. It may be found on or just under the surface as nodules or deep underground as horizontal seams. Flint is the only hard rock to be found on the Downs. Flint was formed from the skeletons of minute animals, such as radiolarians, that floated around in those ancient seas.
65 million years ago the ocean floor began to rise, the sea became shallower and the formation of chalk stopped. Deposits of clays, pebbles and sands were laid down.
20 million years ago, the South Downs were raised from the seabed, through the movement of the earth’s crust. The land masses or ‘tectonic plates’ of Africa and Europe moved towards each other and collided. The rocks were pushed up and created mountain ranges, including the Himalayas and the Alps. The south east of England was caught up in this ‘Alpine Storm’ and the ripples pushed the layers of rock upwards forming a vast extended dome of chalk. The neat layers of sands, clays and chalk, laid down over millions of years in fresh and salt water gradually hardened into rock.
Over millions of years, the landscape has gradually changed shape to form the South Downs as we know it today. The centre of the dome has been eroded. The soft chalk at the top of the dome gradually cracked and crumbled and the falling rain carried off these shattered pieces of chalk. This left an outer upstanding rim of chalk surrounding a lowland plain formed from older layers of clay and sandstone. The outer rim of chalk forms the uplands of the North and South Downs and the central plain is known as the Weald.
2 million years ago were The Ice Ages. Although the South East of England was not covered in ice, an intensely cold climate dominated this area. This meant that the rock and soil was frozen for most of the year. Summer rain and melt-water could not soak into the frozen chalk. So this water formed streams which carved out valleys on the Downs. The rapidly melting snow during the last ice age also carried rock and soil from the hillsides on to the floors of the valleys.
When the climate became warmer, the frozen ground eventually thawed and the water soaked into the little holes in the chalk, leaving the valleys dry. These dry valleys, known in Sussex as coombes, are V-shaped with steep sides. Patches of clay with flints can be found in places on top of the Downs. This is the remains of some clay that was once on top of the chalk that got mixed up with flints from the chalk.
Mining for deeply bedded flint seams of flint began in the Early Neolithic, around 4000 BC, the extraction pits surviving today as large crater-like hollows in the chalk. Early people on the Downs found that they could use the razor-sharp edges of flaked flint as a cutting tool. Flint mines therefore represent one of the oldest and most distinctive forms of archaeological monument recorded from the British Isles. Mines are clearly visible today as a series of impressive oval and circular depressions.
Harrow Hill Flint mines, West Sussex, today
Harrow Hill flint mines under excavation, 1936
I like to try to imagine what life was like back then. Imagine people, six thousand years ago, mining flint for tools. Wonder if any of them were my relatives?
So, there it is, my little piece of history. I am awed when I think of it! Not only does it remind me of England, and my heritage there, but fancy holding something in my hand that has been around for 100 million years!!!
I came across the most divine pieces pictured in ‘Jewelry Concepts and Technology’ by Oppi Untracht, a fantastic book that I bought recently. I was inspired to research John Paul Miller, the artist who created them.
Miller was born in 1918, and started his career as a painter. Inspired by the creations of a fellow student, he started making silver jewellery of his own. After receiving advice from the director of his school that “we don’t need any more good watercolor painters. Why don’t you concentrate on jewelry?” he turned his full attention to the craft.
Miller rediscovered the lost Roman art of granulation. He immersed himself in enamelling. I love his work, it is so intricate and organic. I can only dream of aspiring to be one hundredth as good as this!!
From the interviews I have read, he seems, at 94, to be a humble and gentle man, who has lived an interesting life – well worth reading more about. Thank you, John Paul Miller, for providing such beautiful, inspirational works to the world!
My sister first introduced me to the fantastic architectural works of Antoni Gaudi i Cornet, blogging photos of his creations she visited when she was in Spain. I think he is the master of all things when it comes to architecture. His use of fluid, organic lines and beautiful mosaic tiling just blows me away!
I love that he didn’t just design amazing buildings, he had input into everything that went into or onto them. He was skilled in various arts: ceramics, stained glass, carpentry and wrought iron forging, all of which he incorporated into his beautiful works.
Born in 1852, he was unique, especially in a time which had probably never seen anything remotely like this before!
A truly inspirational man, well worth spending some time immersing yourself in his story and works.
Oh, for a visit to Barcelona to see his work!! It’s on my list of one day dreams….
I remember when I first learned of the existence of colour swatch books that held what seemed to be every colour in the universe. What a revelation! How exciting to flip through, and so much browsing and dreaming and marvelling to be done! (And who knew there were five trillion shades of white?) Pantone brought you all the colour you could ever need.
Then, they brought out bone china coffee mugs in vibrant colours, each one representing a chip from the Pantone colour chart. I coveted one, but who could choose which colour to have!
Pantone Mug -Mushy Pea
Recently, I’ve become aware that Pantone release a fashion colour pallette each season. OOOOOHHHHH!!!
This is the Spring 2013 collection. OK, so this is a northern hemisphere-centric range, and I live in Australia where it is already spring, but I think there’s something here for everyone!
I think I’ve got most of these gorgeous colours just about covered in my gemstone stash, just waiting to be picked out and set in some gorgeous big ring or pendant. I’m glad to see I’m on the right fashion track!
Have you wanted to buy a ring online, but not known your ring size? It’s always best to get a professional to measure with the appropriate gauges, however if you don’t have easy access to a jeweller then you can try the following to work out your size:
Measuring Your Finger
Take a piece of stiff cardboard, plastic or thick wire and wrap it around your finger, then mark the exact spot where the ends join. Do not use a piece of string or paper, as these will bend to the shape of your finger. A piece of cereal box or similar should be about right for most rings. It is best to make the piece of card etc. the width of the new ring. With a ruler measure the length of this piece of card or wire. Read the ring size by circumference from the chart below.
After you have measured the length then tape it together and put it on your finger just like a real ring. Make it a firm fit, but be sure not to push or squeeze it because you won’t be able to do that with a real ring. Make sure it fits over the knuckle. If you have used a thin piece of wire and your new ring is a wide band you must add some size to allow for this. The reverse may also be true. If you use a wide piece of cardboard but the ring is going to be thin then take a quarter size off.
Your ring should fit your finger comfortably; snugly enough so that it will not fall off, but loosely enough to slide over your knuckle. Finger size changes depending on the time of day and the weather. For best results measure your finger size at the end of the day and when your fingers are warm (fingers are smaller in the early morning and when cold.) Measure finger size three to four times to make sure you get a correct reading.
Measuring an Existing Ring
You may already have a ring which fits the finger you are trying to measure. In this case, measure the inside diameter of the ring. This measurement is taken across the centre of the ring from the inside of one side to the inside of the other side. Measure more than once – the largest measurement will be the correct one. Once you have found that a couple of times you can be fairly sure that it is accurate.
Measure the inside circumference of the ring. Get a stiff rectangular piece of paper as thin as possible, roll it into a tube and slide it inside the ring until it fits perfectly. Keep cutting slivers off the edges of the paper until the ends are just touching. You will then have an inside length that you can measure accurately. Allow a touch extra because the paper will have taken up a bit of space inside the ring. Measure the length of the paper.
You now have two measurements to compare with the chart. You really only need one, but using both will give greater accuracy. Next, take the length of the inside of the ring, and mark this length on a piece of very stiff paper or thin cardboard. Tape it together so that it looks like a ring. Make it as wide as the real ring. Put this on your finger and then try the real ring on. The paper ring must be the same fit as the real ring. If you are measuring someone else’s ring on your finger, even if the rings don’t actually fit you, they will both fit on the same position on your finger. Check the inside diameter and inside circumference measurements against the chart and read the size.
