Sunday, January 30, 2011

Happy Valentine's Day!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Red Sea Glass

Just Listed for Valentine's Day!


This sea glass jewelry is made from a piece of lovely and rare red sea glass. I found it last December while on a solitary beach walk on a highly top-secret secluded sea glass beach. My pockets were full, and it was time to go home, but I decided to take one last sweep of the beach. This little piece was probably under water when I arrived, but the tide had receded about a foot, exposing this beauty.


Red is one of the most prized colors for sea glass collectors because it is very rare. According Richard Lamott's book Pure Sea Glass, the color is achieved by using a powdered form of gold chloride, which is an expensive process.
This particular piece is called "flashed glass", which is a manufacturing process that fuses layers of different colors together, in this case, a layer of red is fused to a layer of yellow. This was probably an economical way to achieve the look of solid red while using less red glass. This piece is at least fifty years old, probably much older.

This piece is wrapped in 14K gold filled wire and comes with a 24" gold filled chain and a nylon drawstring gift pouch. It can be viewed by clicking here.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

More Colors, 14K Gold & Sterling Silver

I have been very busy and very lucky. First of all, I found the most beautiful little piece of peach sea glass, and before I even got home, I stopped at my mom's to say "Hi" and she claimed this for her own.

Now, she has never asked for a sea glass necklace before, she said she was waiting for the right piece, and I guess that little peach one was it. But she wanted it wrapped in gold, which I have never used before, so I ordered some from fellow Etsy sellers Lanna's Jewelry Chest and also Thunder Moon Supplies and produced these! The two blues are wrapped in sterling silver and the rest are wrapped in 14K gold filled wire. I can't wait to show it to her. I think it will look nice with her coloring.

The other bit of good fortune I had was that my step-mother Andree was generous enough to share her sea glass collection with me. She and my Dad have been collecting for years and they live on a great sea glass beach, and she is very particular about the condition of the glass she picks up. So this was a huge treat for me. Thank you Andree!



And the last positive thing that happened is that my grandmother very kindly purchased 6 necklaces to give as gifts. Most of the items from my last post including the Wampum necklace.

You can see from all of the pictures I took that I can't get enough of looking at all of these pretty colors! I feel so lucky to be surrounded by so many warm and generous women, in this case my mother, my step-mother and my grandmother. Thank you!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

I love that the first day of 2011 is warm and sunny. Such a great way to start the new year. My son and I went for a walk on the beach. Lately he hates walking on the beach. He thought it was boring and wanted to go home and watch Spongebob. But the water looked like glass, so pretty.



We are recovering from a huge blizzard, and a ton of sand was deposited on the beach. I have noticed that after large storms the sea glass is sharp, as if it had all been re-pulverized. Nothing you would want to wear as jewelry. I did find one jewelry-quality piece:








Too bad my camera was set on macro so you can't really see it. But definitely a piece of Coke bottle. I did find some heart shaped rocks. I am not sure what to do with them, something for Valentine's day, maybe photo cards. And I found some pretty colors, but not sure what to do with those either!


He found some huge bricks and was determined to bring them home, but they were too heavy for him to carry. So I had to carry two heavy bricks the entire way. I think it was his passive-aggressive way to punish me for making him walk the beach. In a few days he will be five, so it seemed like a big deal to me to take our final beach-walk while he was still four. Kind of crazy, I know. Plus we needed the fresh air.


Happy New Year!