I've had a few customers/sea glass hobbyists recently ask how I can come up with some of the jewelry that I have recently created. People innocently ask if I tumble my sea glass... if the question wasn't asked so very innocently, I'd probably be offended by the question. But knowing what kind of sea glass we find here in New Jersey (very angular), I can understand the inquiry.
Very few of the local sea glass jewelry vendors have the rarer colors in their inventory. The vendors that do have pieces with extremely rare colors, often charge quite a bit because it's probably one of the only pieces of sea glass they have in there collection of that color. And since they don't know if they will ever find another piece like that, they are going to get paid when that rare piece finally sells.
Recently, I have created several pieces of jewelry with red sea glass (the 2nd rarest color of sea glass) and with so many red pieces for sale, it's hard to imagine that my family and I could have found all of these pieces at the beach...and they'd be right in thinking so.
The fact of the matter is for some of my sea glass, I have traded, bartered and made outright purchases with reputable collectors that I've known for years. And even though I have these contacts from several locations all over the world, it sometimes takes months, and even years for some of my jewelry creations to come to fruition.
The "stack" necklace of blue and white sea glass had been a work in progress for several months. The final piece, a cobalt blue piece of sea glass was found last December on LBI. I had been hoping for a deeper cornflower piece to finish the creation, but the sea glass Gods never presented me with what I was looking for.
The red sea glass earrings that I recently sold contained a red piece of sea glass that I had put aside over a year ago! When one of my sea glass friends had sea glass to trade (well, trade & sell) and it contained a couple pieces of reds, I jumped on the opportunity. It wasn't exactly the shape I was looking for, but the sea glass Gods also don't take requests for size, shade, shape... believe me, I've asked many times (regardless, the customer that purchased the earrings seemed quite happy)
I have several pieces of sea glass in various colors for future creations. They sit in small jewelry boxes on a shelf above my craft table... jewelry puzzles, waiting for a missing piece to turn up. And when one does, to this long-time sea glass collector, it's a thing of beauty.
I love it when a plan comes together!
'til next time...
R
