Beach Shack Project

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Beach Shack Project

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I use flotsum and jetson from the beach to create handmade pieces of jewellery.My work stems around a central idea of taking objectionable elements and altering them so they then become objects of desire. MAIN WEBSITE: http://www.beachshackproject.co.uk

Shop: http://www.beachshackproject.bigcartel.com
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beachshackproject/
Blogspot: http://beachshackproject.blogs

pot.co.uk/
Tumblr: http://beachshackproject.tumblr.com/
Pinterest:http://pinterest.com/bspahoy/
Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheBeachShackProject

Email: [email protected]

26/07/2025

New 💕
Raw red jaspers, quartz, limestone, chalcedony, sandstone and sea glass pieces…

06/04/2025

Some beautiful hunks of rare Luxullianite have been turned into a choker and longer style necklace. It’s a beautiful and rare variation of granite called Luxullianite, found exclusively in the location of Luxulyan, St Austell, a stones throw from where I grew up. I’m just obsessed with this salmon hued granite! They have been cut and polished which brings out the colours, you can see a raw version I collected last year in the photos too. Such a special Cornish Stone 💕

The Cornubian Batholith underlies most of Cornwall, consisting of a huge body of intrusive igneous rock. It is exposed on the surface as 6 major plutons in Cornwall (lots of places note 5, forgetting the beautiful Isles of Scilly) and one of these outcrops is the St Austell Granite where you find this unusual and unique porphyritic rock.

Pretty salmon hued tabular phenocrysts of orthoclase (alkali) feldspar sit in a matrix of inky tourmaline, quartz, cassiterite and sparkly brown mica. One of the aspects of Luxullianite that makes it so special is its radically arranged blue-green acicular tourmaline crystals, that form circular or part circular patterns with the aid of a microscope. Infact, Alex Strekeisen states on his handy website that “It forms perhaps the most beautiful radial aggregates occurring in any British rock.”

05/04/2025

Working with some new minerals! And GOLD!

Turquoise from Cornwall. An incredibly rare stone to find, it was discovered quite by chance as a by product of the China Clay (Kaolinite) Industry. It would have been too costly just to mine the small deposits available, and most came from the GunHeath Clay Pit outside St Austell which has since closed in the 1990’s. The rock was only collected by admirers and it was never mined for commercial reasons. I love these images I found online of all the carefully labeled and curated specimens! I have some currently available raw, and polished, in silver (surgical stainless steel) or 18k gold.

Also you can see a beautiful hunk of Cornish Amethyst. Amethyst is probably one of the most well known semi-precious stones, but did you know it occurs naturally here in the UK too? Cornwall has some great deposits and its common to find little nuggets on the beach on the South Coast. Probably washed down from its source or dumped with China Clay waste on the beach.
Its Purple comes from the iron present as the crystal forms. Its just a different coloured type of quartz. Colours range from light lilac to dark vivid violet.
Amethyst is a rare stone to find in the UK, so Cornwall is obviously very blessed. Im a bit obsessed with this larger chunk recently listed which hangs from a lovely chinky 18k gold filled chain. A slightly darker hue, probably down to the Geothite (a ferric mineral) inclusions.

The Chalcopyrite and Quartz has already been reserved and will be winging its way back to Kernow!

Please see my previous post for some gorgeous polished Cornish Turquoise!

02/04/2025

Really pleased with how these Cornish Turquoise Cabochons turned out. Its the first time I’ve worked with semi-precious cabochons that I have bought, and the price reflects the expense of buying these beautiful rare Cornish gemstones. They have been sourced, cut and polished by a specialist so don’t have the talcy raw appearance of a rough cut version.
Two of the cabochons display some gorgeous quartz inclusions too 😍 Some very special pieces. If they are popular I will try and source more British Gemstones to work with, so I’m testing the water!
They are timeless designs and I secretly want to keep the circular coin shaped one myself 😭
Cornish Turquoise is usually composed of feldspar, quartz and micas depending on where it forms and the different minerals oxidising, more copper will make it blue, more iron will make it more verdant. I love the dusty milky opaque blue hue of the Kernow variation. You can actually find it a stones throw from where I grew up, outside St Austell, Cornwall, where kaolinite (China Clay) is still mined. Turquoise was a happy accident when mining for kaolinite, so although its discovery was a by product of the huge China Clay Industry, it obviously unearthed some treasure.

12/03/2025

Recent happenings… 💕

Have a bit of a flint obsession… so theres lots of flint pebbles being wrapped!

But what do you know about flint?!

Flint. A very under appreciated rock. Once reveered for its ability to start fire, and its resistance to wear and tear which made it perfect for fashioning tools. It flys under the radar now because we have contemporary versions of these rudimentary stones. Snazzy lighters in our pockets and tools made out of highly durable metals such as steel.

Flint is interesting because its very conception starts in pockets and crevices deep within limestone and chalk, so although it is also considered sedimentary, it is also a cryptocrytalline version of the mineral quartz, and so fits into the category of “chert”.

Nobody can agree on how flint is formed, but the general concencus is that it forms as nodules within a oreexisting soft sedimentary limestone.

These pockets and crevices in the soft rock are considered to be old burrows or tunnels made by ancient marine organisms, like molluscs or crustceans. These holes are then filled with a silica like-ozze from minerals that have precipitated in the host rock, probably from silica based organisms like sponges. This process is called diagenesis, which is similar to to what happens to rocks during metamophism, but just with lower temperatures and pressures involved. Sometimes you can actually find fossils preserved in the flint. Each piece of flint has been eroded out of the soft limestone host rock, so when you look at huge expanses of flint shingle beaches, just imagine that every single pebble was created in and weathered out of the local limestone, is this case its the stunning chalk cliffs “the white cliffs of Dover” (not that I’m anywhere near Dover but its that iconic pale looming coastline that is so famous on this part of the coast. And what about the host rock? What is that made of?! In a nut shell, billions and trillions of dead smushed up sea creatures then smushed together to form a rock. Im very scientific. 🤣

23/02/2025

Ahoy. Some salty creations have washed up onto my website. I’ve been slowly working on these in between my Geology degree and theres lots of beautiful stones, some semi precious, all found by moi, and obviously a few pieces of frosty sea glass! I tried to do a little write up on each stone so you can get as excited as me about their origin and formation! I am part of an amazing group of FB and there are some fab geologists that help me with identifications. As well as the amazing .thegeologist who is always great at answering my random questions 🤣🤣🤣. Anyhoo, theres some new bling. Check it out! And I would love to hear your feedback, feel like I’ve been living under a rock for a while 😎🪨

04/02/2025

Slowly slowly ✨ Enjoying the playing part of this chapter. Defo leaning more towards my ingraining geology passion, some gorgeous beach found stones here, a little red veined jasper found in Suffolk - a beautiful semi precious gem, some peachy quartzite found at Southwick, banded sandstone, quartz and iron oxide, what looks like a part of fossilised shell (the banded one) and a porous undersaturated pink found at Southwick, probably of Industrial Origin doesn’t look local. And a little hunker of aquamarine sea glass (keeping it real) 💕

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Brighton And Hove

Website

http://www.beachshackproject.co.uk/

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