Photography and magnesite

Christmas is over for another year, in fact another year is almost over - only hours to go until 2009 shows its face!

Our christmas was very family oriented and the children had a wonderful time, as they always do. Did you receive anything you just LOVE? I did! I received an autographed copy of the wonderful book A Grain of Sand by Dr Gary Greenberg. I've mentioned it on my blog before as a wonderful look into something so mundane yet so startingly beautiful that you will never look at sand the same way, ever again! Not just a gorgeous coffee table book, there is wonderful information on both Dr. Greenberg's microphotography and on sand itself.

I was contacted by a fellow who saw my admiration of macrophotography and sent me a link to his photos on flickr. He has taken some wonderful shots of stones that would make great wall art.

Bright blue-greens are always popular in summer and I found a great strand of treated magnesite (pictured above made into a necklace) that gives that wonderful aegean green colour. I haven't dealt with magnesite before and was interested to learn more about it. It is commonly found in a massive form (more rarely as crystals) in white/grey/yellow-brown. Fairly soft at 3.5-4 it has been used for sculpture for thousands of years. (A small Mesopetamian lioness sculpture made of magnesite c. 3000-2800 BC was sold by Sothebys in 2007 for over US$57 million!)

Metaphysically it is said to bring deep peace to meditation. It promotes a positive attitude, stimulates ideas yet has a calming effect on emotions. Said to detoxify the body it acts as a muscle relaxant, treats bone and teeth disorders, speeds up fat metabolism and helps deal with fevers and chills. Sounds like I should save a piece for the medicine cabinet! ;)

My family (and I imagine half of Australia) are off to a New Years Eve celebration tonight. If you have such a gathering to attend I hope you have a wonderful time and I look forward to catching up with you in 2009 ;)

Happy New Year!

The wonders revealed by macro and micro photography

We have had some wet, wintry days the last week although today we have one of those brilliant blue skies that Australia is renowned for! With hardly a breath of air, the temperature is brisk it would be a beautiful day for flying. It definitely makes you want to get outside and DO things :) Of course, I could feel especially like that as I have been concentrating so hard on my computer screen working on my new website - I'll show it all to you soon, still some work to go!

I often encourage people to look closer at gemstones and to see the intricate colour play, patterns and so on. Consequently I'm pretty enamoured of macro and micro photography. Well this gallery on the Discover Magazine site, has me glued to the screen. I want to keep returning to look at the beautiful pictures. What are the pictures you ask? Is it worthwhile having a look? My word it is! Entitled, Each Grain of Sand is a Work of Art is intruiging enough by itself. They are photos taken by the book A Grain of Sand by Dr. Gary Greenberg. With photographs typically 80x magnification and above you see a minature world of shells and coral, minerals and gemstones that you never knew existed and will make you look at sand in a completely different way. Bet you add the book to your wish list (it's added to mine!)

Cruising around looking at more pictures I also found this gorgeous pendant made by Tulips Treasure Box on Etsy. It reminds me of the sea, the sky and the stars.

Hmmm, MUST stop 'surfing'... for now anyway.

Well, what can I show you today? Given my penchant for closeups, I've selected a close up of a piece of ocean jasper - wouldn't it look amazing on even higher magnification - I wonder what secrets it would reveal?

Have a great day!

New flyers and a bit of a ramble.

Woohoo! Today I received the flyers for Craftfest - the show I am participating in during October. Don't they look great! A bracelet of mine is pictured behind the 'c' :D. Thats two years in a row that I have had a picture on the flyer which means either a) my photography skills are up to par or b) I make nice jewellery that they just HAVE to feature ;)

I fell victim to the dreaded flu that is going around this part of the world at the moment so creativity has been a bit low for the last week or so. I have however got a few pieces done - a lovely necklace with holly blue chalcedony that has some druzy visible; a fun, bright mixed piece including calcite, coral, amethyst, angelite, onyx and rose quartz; a couple of real stunners in the more traditional jewellery style - one with blue topaz and one with amethyst.

Since I am getting ready for show 'season' I have made a gazillion pewter bookmarks - well it felt that many, but I think it was about 40 actually! Plus I have made some rather classy phone charms/handbag charms/zipper pulls, with a gemstone focal and a little sparkle provided by some Swarovski crystals. The bookmarks are a perennial favourite for a little gift that is a bit different and I usually sell a few of these at each show. I am hoping the charms will help fill that void a bit further and keep up interest being something a little different to the usual thing you see.

I was surfing around some local sites today and found one on Mudgee Wine Events (http://www.mudgeewine.com.au/) . Mudgee is about 100km from me and my nearest 'big' town. I have quite a few clients from Mudgee - its a very pretty town that has grown a lot in recent years but has retained its rural roots. It is also a well known wine area and gets a lot of tourist trade. Anyway... I was perusing their site and was both excited and disappointed to see an Art & Craft Expo - advertised as an exhibition for local artists. OK, now I know I'm not IN Mudgee, but this is the first I have heard of this exhibition that is less than a month away. Living in a relatively small community you would think it would have received a bit of advertising, but alas no. We have virtually no venues for local artists and artisans, apart from single artist exhibitions at assorted galleries. To think a combined expo like this is happening and no-one knows about it is terribly disappointing. I wonder how many local artists and artisans don't know about it either? Definitely a case for improving communications don't you think?

Another site I found today via the Switchboards site is http://www.unearthedtees.com/. This is a great site that sells t-shirts with rock/gem related puns or sayings. Cute idea. Another wonderful thing the site is doing is "UnEarthing Kindness" where a decent % of the profit of sales from now until the end of September will go to earthquake relief in Peru. Way to go!!