Summertime Fun at the Beach

Wow, it's been quite awhile since my last blog entry...but I guess that's a good thing.
It must mean I've been spending a lot of time on the beach, doing what I love- searching for sea glass.

For those that are wondering what hunting for beach glass is about, or just looking for a fun & eco friendly summertime hobby, check out this article about what I plan on doing this summer...

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8089711/fun_in_the_sun_at_the_beach.html?cat=24

Maybe I'll see you on the beach....enjoy!

Is It Just Me or.... Recent Observations on Sea Glass Collecting....

Is it Just Me or....

Has the prices being realized on the sale of sea glass gone through the roof? The economy has been just awful and from what I've gathered, I'm not the only sea glass jewelry maker that has been experiencing slower than usual sales. So what gives with the insane recent prices?

My hubby thinks there has been a huge number of jewelry-makers that have noticed that sea glass jewelry is a niche worth looking into. He's come across several listings on eBay where the sea glass is quite questionable (disclaimer- it's sometimes very hard to tell if some shards are authentic or not...but in most cases, he believes the sellers that are 100% legit do a great job showing their offerings to be authentic sea glass...and he questions those sellers that don't take quality pictures to be those to watch out for... he feels they are hiding something...Hmmm, tumbled, craft ???)
He's also noticed some rather questionable to blatantly fake pieces of sea glass jewelry over the last 4-6 months. Since he is a huge part of my operation (the main sea glasser, hole driller and has taken over the ordering of all supplies needed for my little biz) he has started to question people as to their knowledge of sea glass, where specific pieces were found and so on. He's gone as far to tell vendors that some of the pieces they are selling shouldn't be listed as authentic sea glass, rather be called altered sea glass because they've been tumbled, treated with some sort of oil, or they are just "undercooked".

Is It Just Me or....

Is everyone selling jewelry made with "sea glass" lately? I've come across several jewelry-makers that use several different types beads as their focal piece and lo and behold, there is the odd sea glass jewelry creation.

In some cases, the vendor remembers finding the piece at the beach when they were little, or on summer vacation. The answer flows freely, and they often have a story about walking on the beach with friends or family when they came across it. Most admit to not knowing much about sea glass ... until they found sea glass jewelry online or at a craft show and realized she had a great focal piece for a jewelry creation (and could get decent $$ for it).

But others know very little about sea glass, claim to have been given it, purchased it at a yard sale (?), but most likely checked out a site like Etsy.com, saw the prices being asked for authentic sea glass and they figured no one would know the difference between tumbled glass and authentic. Perhaps I give them too much credit... in many cases it looks like the packaged "stuff" that can be purchased from their local craft store for a few dollars. Or bought a cheap lot of sea glass on eBay, not knowing what they were buying.

In almost every case, the vendor knows nothing about sea glass and often, it's the greed of the vendor that gives them away. Instead of sticking with a common color, they go for the rare Red colors (because the asking price is usually quite high compared to a Heineken green) and figure their asking price of $25 or $30 for their "authentic" Red sea glass necklace will sell immediately. After all, I always find that sea glass jewelers only have red sea glass...and nothing else.


Perhaps all of the above is due to the fact that authentic sea glass is exactly as Richard LaMotte described for his book... vanishing gems. In New Jersey, pieces wash up on the beach almost every day, but they are usually the common colors.... Budweiser browns, Heineken greens, and Corona clear. The surf here isn't rocky, nor rough, and most of the sea glass we find is not jewelry quality (but still so much fun to find!) Every so often we come across a rare color shard lying in the sand, but with the exception of a few key sea glassing days, finding those rare colors are few and far between.

Searching for sea glass has become a more popular beach-going event than tossing a frisbee. In the past few years, the amount of people who seem to be looking for sea glass has more than tripled. And with the popularity of the "Vanishing Gems" comes the perceived value...and worse, what some people will resort to, to find sea glass before others. I've watched people with nets, scooping along the shell beds in the surf, sometimes within just a foot or less of other people!

Not everything I've observed over the last few months is a negative. I have viewed several gorgeous pieces of sea glass... the owners of the shards were more than happy to show me the "gems" of their collections. I have also found some of the new sea glass jewelry makers to share the same sea glass values that I have (authentic only) and a few of them are quite talented!

No longer is the sea glass on the beach left to myself and a few other collectors. Being one of a few offering sea glass jewelry is a thing of the past also. Despite dwindling supplies, sea glass continues to move toward the mainstream and with it, the value continues to go up. ( and in the last few months, the value has sky-rocketed) But I'm always confident that there is a gem waiting for me at the beach, and as always, you can find me at the beach, looking down in hopes of finding it.

'til next time...

R

New Creations, Sea Glassing Trip, weird online incidents

The creative juices were flowing in overdrive this past weekend. I was a wire wrapping fool and probably knocked out about 2 dozen pendants from Friday night to Sunday evening. My fingers, the tools, the wire and the sea glass were all in the zone and everything seemed to be going so smoothly. I'd sit at the table for awhile, look at some of my choices and the next thing I knew, I had 3 or 4 wrapped pendants.

I think what started off this flow was sitting down to work on a custom order. The customer, a sea glass collector who comes up with some beautiful sea glass on the west coast, sent me several gorgeous pieces to wrap for her. I became inspired as soon as I saw these fab pieces. I immediately sat down last weekend and wrapped 2 of the beauties...but I saved some of the best pieces for last!
The bottom image is the entire lot of wrapped sea glass...aren't they some gorgeous pieces of sea glass?? What a pleasure to work with and so very inspiring! It made my not shabby, but nearly as gorgeous selections a joy to wrap...that's the kind of "zone" I fell into all weekend long. I still have all of my wrapped pieces laying out on my work bench...just a some eye candy for me each day when I go to my crafting table.

Since the creativity was flowing, I thought Sunday would be a good day for a bit of sea glassing. It was overcast, rain in the forecast...a perfect day to find some treasures.

My hubby and I arrived at the beach around 8-ish and we were the only people out there. The groomers had been out there, but must've been called back as they only did a couple strips of beach and there were hardly any footprints. Unfortunately, there also weren't very many shell beds and high-tide the night before must have been quite calm because there was almost nothing worthwhile at the high tide line.

And then the rain came, light at first, but quickly changing to a steady, driving rain. It didn't take too long before we were drenched and the lack of sea glass on the empty beach made things even more depressing. I did come across a couple shells that I'll drill and polish for some future creation and I also found a small bone .... well it was from a rather large fish and it seemed quite old. We've found these types of bones before and they do wash up from time to time, so we left this one behind for some one else to "find"...unless maybe the ocean reclaimed it later that day during the next high tide.

Strange online findings.... okay, this one was so strange, but it gave me one of those "what the hell" faces.
I was checking out my site stats and someone googled "how to polish sharp edges on sea glass" and somehow found my shop...and then they proceeded to spend a great deal of time there, looking at 39 pages (I only had 17 items listed). I thought it to be quite strange... I only use authentic sea glass and I usually don't have sharp edges in my creations...the sharp edged pieces only make it to my decorative jars or maybe a mosaic creation.
Could it be they really like my creations enough to average viewing each listing more than 2x each?

'til next time...

R

Old Ideas Equal New Creations....

In my last update on this blog, I mentioned that I was planning on taking some old ideas and turning them into new creations. Since this past weekend's weather made it hard to plan outings in advance, I found time to get to my crafting table to plot & scheme and I came up with plans for a few sea glass mobiles.

I also finally got around to making a few pictures using sea glass and as soon as I clear out all of the vacation photos from my memory card, I'll add take pictures of the sailboat picture and the dragonfly picture (the dragonfly was pieced together oh, about 14 or 15 months ago..lol... and now she's finally in a frame)

I have a few more plans to execute by the middle of September and a lot more creating to do by then. DH doesn't know it yet, but he has a whole bunch of sea glass waiting for holes and if I get a chance today, I'm going to add more to his "to drill list" : )

Oh yea, I also created a few more piece of sea glass jewelry... the images above are a couple of the creations I was able to capture images of before the skies became overcast. The purple sea glass necklace is just gorgeous and the image does the shard little justice...it's currently on Etsy and the olive sea glass w/seahorse charm will go into my Etsy shop later today.

Hopefully I'll have some images of the sea glass mosaics for the next update.

'til next time...

R

New Summer Sea Glass Creations, Craft Show Schedule....

I've been off from the J-O-B for the last two days, so I used my little "mini-vacation" to straighten up my craft table and do a little creating to build up my inventory for June & July craft shows.
The images above are a couple of my newest items (both are in my Etsy shop) and I'll be adding a couple more into both my ArtFire and Etsy shops over the next couple of days.

I even snuck out of the house and made a trip to AC Moore this afternoon...and found a couple items I've been looking for online, but unable to find. Finding those components will allow me to place my online orders for drill bits, and a bunch of sterling silver (wires, necklaces, bracelets, head pins, etc).

So my "summer circuit" craft show season is under way. I had a fun time at the Barnegat Bay Festival and was excited by both the amount of traffic at the show and the number of people that were buying and/or very, very interested in my sea glass jewelry. I handed out a lot of business cards and had quite a few people asking me what shows I'm doing next.

My summer shows (for my followers that prefer not to shop online)
June 13th- The Field Dog Expo on Mt. Holly Rd. in Medford, NJ. Looking at all the activities they are planning for this show, it looks to be a fun, family festival. Lots of things to keep the children occupied, plenty of puppies and of course, a handmade craft fair with a few EtsyNJ members attending.

July 11th- OM Baby, Pt. Pleasant, NJ- another EtsyNJ event. It seems like about 20-25+ EtsyNJers will appear at the OM Baby Yoga studio for the 2009 spring version of this event. It's in a great area, many wonderful shops nearby and of course, the Pt. Pleasant beach and boardwalk.

July 18th- The 2nd annual spring edition of The Handmade Faire. This year's spring event will be held in Freedom Park, in Medford, NJ. The show is juried, (I'm still pending and crossing my fingers to be accepted) and one of our EtsyNJ team leaders, organizes this event. The first annual spring and fall events were outstanding... the high quality of handmade crafters made these shows the best in Central/Southern NJ and perhaps the best throughout the state (they were by far the best handmade show I've ever attended) I'm really looking forward to this show, and hope to be selected (emails to AbbieRoad of Etsy requesting my presence are appreciated... lol)

August 1- The Lacey Crabfest & Craftshow- I don't remember how many years the Crabfest has been held, (I know it's more than a dozen) but the CraftShow is in it's 9th year. The event attracted several hundred people last year despite a hard early morning shower and even with a slow start, the show was a success for me. Another fun show that attracted a handful of EtsyNJ members (which always makes a show a good time)

Hopefully somewhere in the mix, we'll get the first handmade craft show at the Nautical Museum in Beach haven on LBI (probably the 2nd or 3rd weekend in August)

That's it...a busy summer, squeeze in a vacation and a few trips to the beach and it's almost Labor day by the time the smoke clears : (

til next time...

R

First on the Beach?? Beachcombing at Low Tide

My hubby set the alarm for 5am to do a bit of beachcombing this morning. His game plan was to hit the beach shortly before sunrise and be first on the beach. With low tide peaking somewhere between 5: 30 and 5:55 this morning, he grabbed a quick cup of coffee for the ride, bundled up and made his trek to the beach. The temperature when he left was 33 degrees and with a 10-10mph wind out of the chilly west, the wind chill hovered around 20 degrees.

His hope was to be first on the beach, but he quickly realized when he got to his favorite spot, that someone had beat him to the high tide line. He surmised that a couple people walking a dog had walked along the what the high tide left behind and shockingly, what looked to be a women's footprint was in the sand... yes a FOOTPRINT... not shoe print, but a bare naked foot!

The winds made for a brutal 20-30 minutes on the beach and by the time my hubby decided to call it a morning, his feet were very cold (and he was wearing heavy wool socks and insulated boots) The wind was finding any little opening and quickly getting to his skin.

So besides getting a chance to watch another glorious sunrise (which he says somehow warms him up ...if only for a couple of minutes) he noticed thousands of crab shells and crab legs all over the beach. The gulls must have had some feast earlier that morning!

He did come across a couple of decent green pieces... possibly jewelry quality, and a few small pieces that will go into one of our display glasses/jars. Plus he took several pictures of the sunrise.

If you take a look at the ocean, you can see why our sea glass is rarely jewelry quality... a flat sea with no rocky areas... that often equals triangular and square pieces, rather than the round, well tumbled and sometimes flawless pieces found on the islands and the west coast.

Oh well, he said he's gonna try the beach again later this week, probably on Thursday or Friday, when low tide is closer to 10 & 11 in the morning.

til next time...

R