Wordless Wednesday - Almost

We just moved...needed a bigger place for the boys. During the moving process, I found a few pieces that were somehow misplaced among my craft supplies and with the inspiration from the Sea Glass Festival, I was motivated... hope you enjoy!

'til next time...
R

Finally...I Found a What I Needed to Complete a Piece!

Making jewelry is all about visual appeal and that makes working with sea glass a challenge at times. You can only use what the tides bring you... the price is right, but you don't have many choices when it comes to shape and color.

About 2 years ago, I found a beautiful cobalt blue piece of sea glass. The smooth, rounded edges were quite unusual for the Jersey shore, and I assumed the piece has spent decades, and decades tumbling around the surf before presenting itself one cold winter morning. When I returned home that morning, I had a "creative vision" of what I wanted to make with this rare NJ find, so I set it aside, and began going through my collection to start gathering similar sized pieces that would be used in the creation.
My idea was for a necklace, one that would make for a great early summer/ 4th of July piece of summer bling... a great patriotic piece that would catch people's eye.

Of course, finding the perfect red piece of sea glass would be a challenge. Red sea glass is the 2nd rarest of sea glass colors and with the exception of a reddish-pinkish piece my DH found 4 summers ago, I haven't even heard of anyone coming across a red in NJ for many years.

So my gorgeous cobalt sat in a small gift box, with the similar sized white pieces I plan to use in the creation of the necklace. It sat waiting for the perfect red. After the 4th of July, 2009 passed, the pieces sat waiting for any similar size piece of red...perfect, not perfect.

With the passing of another year's fireworks, and another 4th of July celebration, I almost forgot about my "vision". That is until I came across a fellow collector with a couple pieces of red sea glass...and one was so similar in size to what I needed to complete my vision.

After much going back and forth as to what it would take for me to own the needed red, it finally came to fruition... I would trade Juanita a couple of aqua blues, and yellows AND wrap a couple of her special pieces to acquire the red (and a few pendant sized pieces of various colors)to finish my "vision".

The problem with my vision is this piece is it's not like the "greatest piece of jewelry" I've ever created. Actually the problem is my love for cobalt blue pieces, and when I found this well-rounded piece of cobalt blue on my favorite stretch of beach, I had to create something incredible with it...it screamed to me that I needed to make something great with this rare find.

And that's the problem with working with sea glass and having creative visions. You have your idea of what you want to do, and the ocean has her idea of what she's willing to give you and I'm sure she laughed loudly when she saw me coming. Here's that women looking for a red...as if! LOL

But we both know that the search was both fun (and a little frustrating)and deep down, I know that it would have been much more satisfying if I could have located the red laying in the surf one day. But had that been the case, I would be keeping the necklace for myself : )

Now it's time to hold my breathe while my DH drills small holes in the sea glass... I guess my vision isn't finished just yet.

til next time... and hopefully an image of the finished piece....
R

I Wonder What This Was In It's Previous Life?

I love playing with my sea glass. Taking out a jar or bucket and carefully spreading it out on the table. It's amazing how I can often find a piece that intrigues me...one that that I may have overlooked the last time I looked through them...or perhaps a piece that I scooped up at the beach and didn't pay much attention to when I came across it. Since DH and I are such big fans of blue sea glass, I couldn't believe that we hadn't noticed this piece before and yet somehow this piece has escaped us.

This cobalt blue piece of sea glass is quite different than any I've come across before. In the 2nd image above, there is a raised circular piece with an arrow on it (the image has been enhanced to show the arrow, thus the washed out color of blue) and the reverse (top image...this image shot through a 10x50 magnifying glass for detail...again washing out the color of the glass) shows a pattern of ooooooooo .

While this piece of sea glass will never be mistaken for jewelry quality, it did make for an interesting search for what might have this shard been before it was discarded into the sea. Being a big fan of sea glass, my interest is still piqued and if anyone knows the origin of this piece of deep cobalt blue sea glass, I'd love to hear what it may have been before the ocean got her hands on it.


'til next time...
R

PS- Yes I did a little jewelry-making this weekend also... images for my next blog entry : )

All The Leaves Are Brown & The Sky Is Gray...

Wow, the summer is almost over. The children are officially back in school as of today (I don't what I'm going to do with myself, I think, ignoring the huge pile of sea glass that needs to be drilled...lol)

With a show this coming Sunday (The Beach Plum Festival, Island Beach State Park, NJ) I guess it's time to continue to put a few more items together, finish my wine glass charms (with sea glass for the "charm", of course) and begin working on a few more bracelets and pairs of earrings. I wrapped several pieces over the weekend and asked hubby to drill a few larger pieces of sea glass so I could attach charms to them. All 15 pieces are know waiting for my order of silver chains to arrive and they finished pieces will "debut" (like people are waiting with bated breath...lol) at the show this weekend.

A couple of the pieces have already found their way into my Etsy shop and a few more will be heading into the shop during the week (images of a couple necklaces above)

The recent tropical storms seemed to have stirred up quite a bit of shells on the beach and in the shell beds in the shallow water...but the sea glass is either buried underneath (or in the sand). Hopefully, things will settle down a bit and now that the summer is over, there will be far fewer people searching for sea glass. Here's hoping the next full moon exposes some beauties that were kicked up from the ocean floor and brought in for me to find...it's been a while since I found a pretty piece of cobalt and I'd really like to make myself a necklace with a piece of LBI cobalt blue!

I'm trying to figure out how to add a slideshow to my blog...I think it's too large and I have to figure out how to reduce the parameters to fit my side panel. Hopefully for next time...

'til then,
R