I’ve been wanting to post this one for a while, but as these pretty jewels were gifts for my Mom, I had to wait until after she opened her presents to tell you all about them!
You may have remembered that while I was in France, I collected a big handful of sea glass while on the Île Sainte-Marguerite. It was simply everywhere. Either a new crop washes up every day on the island, or the French really don’t pay sea glass any mind. I grew up collecting beach treasures, so I was in sea glass heaven while on this beautiful island!
My Mom is an especially avid sea lover, and her birthday is in the hot heat of July – perfect timing to make her something special with this beautiful French sea glass.
I love to get crafty every now and then, but am by no means a jeweler! So I had to do a bit of digging online to find the right tools and techniques to make this sea glass into something wearable. You can find two great sea glass wire wrapping tutorials here and here – I used these as a base and then just kind of free-styled the rest. The first thing I did was buy supplies. Some light weight wire for wrapping, some good quality glue, and some clasps and hoops for making jewelry.
I stacked the sea glass and then glued the two pieces together. I could have just wrapped single pieces, but doubling them up made them more dynamic and colorful.
^ ^ My favorite is this piece with the “H” on it!! Rarely do I find sea glass with any lettering still visible.
Once the sea glass has dried together, you can start wire wrapping. You could spend hours looking at tutorials, but the best advice I will give is just to let the wire do what it wants. If you try to manipulate it too much, it will end up looking forced.
You’ll need about a foot of wire per pendant. Put one end of your wire on the back side of the glass, and from there slowly start to wrap the wire around the glass in every which way and direction. Again, just let the wrapping process flow and don’t try too hard to make it look perfect.
Once you’re happy with the wrap, you can add a loop at the top to make a pendant. Again, I recommend checking out this demo film for the full length tutorial.
For this project I used two different needle nose pliers, glue, a 22 gauge wire, and some random jewelry clasps.
In the end, I made a ton of pendants. Some I fashioned into necklaces, some became earrings, and others were gifted as-is, for my mom to purpose as she likes.
I had a blast making this homemade sea glass jewelry, and it was super easy to boot!! I also have some smooth rocks that I am looking forward to wrapping, and may even make some charms for myself.
Happy birthday Mom, I hope you love your homemade birthday gifts :)
Reblogged this on The Pretty Canary.
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Best gifts ever, made with love :) oxox Mom
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My first thought was that those green things were eatable. A very intriguing post.
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Great idea ! I’m going to make some of those too, in fact I collect such glass & put it in jars. But this idea is much better.
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Ohh, sea glass in jars sounds lovely! It’s fun to collect beach treasures, and really rewarding to make something beautiful with something you just picked up off the beach :)
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Beautiful! We (my children and I) LOVE to collect beach glass. There’s just something about it that seems calm and peaceful, maybe like a little of the ocean in every piece.
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The pendants turned out beautifully! We are also avid collectors of beach glass and we’d love to share your project on our upcoming “Friday Five” post where we will be featuring our 5 favorite sea glass DIY projects.
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Thanks for the compliment Sonja! Please, share away :) Let me know if / when you post it and I will be sure to check it out.
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Hello! Just wanted to let you know that our roundup including your beautiful project was posted. Here is the link: http://www.sustainmycrafthabit.com/blog/2015/8/5/friday-five-beachy-diy-sea-glass-projects.
Thank you for letting us include your post!
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Great ideas, love the colors.
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