I'm at it again!

Making sea glass windows...

this one is a custom piece ordered at my show last month.

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Oh, the things I've been up to!

If you are a regular reader of my blog, then you'll know that one of the things I make are Christmas ornaments. I recently completed the first installment of a fairly large order (by my standards anyway!) for a lovely shop in Newport, RI called The Nutcracker Suite(website still under construction but the shop has been around since the early 80s).

The Nutcracker is an amazing store that makes you forget that it might be 85 degrees and 90% humidity outside. Once you step through the door, you are welcomed into a world that is pure Christmas!

And while I don't have any glorious photos of the shop to show you (yet), I CAN give you a peek at the selection of sea inspired decorations I made for them.







Many of these ornaments are exclusive to the Nutcracker Suite, others are available on my website.

And after weeks and weeks of cutting, gluing, painting and wire wrapping, as well as many MANY hang tags-

it all condensed into these two itty bitty boxes!

Please stay tuned for a post coming soon that will feature a tour of The Nutcracker Suite as well as a giveaway of one of their awesome glass ornaments!

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Monday Night Craft Night- working on a bird bath

So about a year and a half ago, I made a bird bath. And when I say "made" I mean I bought this mold from this great eBay seller, I lugged a giant bag of cement home from the hardware store and I actually mixed, poured and formed my own basin for a bird bath.

After pricing out concrete bird baths at local home improvement stores, I decided that even if I never made another one, this was still about half the price of buying one already made, so it was definitely worth it!

The idea was that I would mosaic it and put it in my garden. Well I started out on a roll. Here you can see I started cutting the glass and laying it out in a pattern.

I even managed to adhere that bit to the bottom of the basin.

Then life got in the way and so did the bird bath, so it got shoved under the basement stairs where it sat. And sat. And collected dust kitties. And ewwww.

Okay, now fast forward to last night- the year and a half later bit of my story. I hauled it out of the basement and up into my car and down to my friend Lexi's house for craft night. And I finally got around to doing some more work on it.


You can see I was working on the green and blue section. It was a pain because I had to come up and over curves- which required me to make really small cuts (something I'm not terribly good at!)


The general idea is that the rainbow will come over the sides and "land" in the white "cloud" section at the bottom- which isn't very cloudish looking at the moment but I've only just started that section as well. It will, I promise!


I am bound and determined to get this thing into my garden before summer is over! This is going to be my "because I want to" project this week.

Many people think my job is great- I get to be creative and make things all the time. And while that's true, sometimes it's hard because if I have a large order to fill, like 50 of the same Christmas ornament, it looses some of the creative fun and just becomes WORK like anything else.

So when I'm super busy with real work, sometimes it's fun to take a break and do some fun (read: unpaid) work to help keep my creative juices flowing!

Hopefully I'll have some more progress photos to show in the coming week. Wish me luck!

OOPS! I almost forgot to mention that I bought the cute starfish tile (and also a whimsical little red crab that I'll use on another project) from artsyhandpaints on Etsy!

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Meh!

I finally got a good chunk of work done today- 14 pendants in various stages of soldering.

I picked 6 to focus on finishing so I could get a batch into the tumbler to polish. I filed and sanded them. I attached those in need of attaching. I made 6 bails for them.

I got out my third hand. (seriously, that's what they call this thing)

I lined up pendant number 1 and its bail.

I lit the torch. Spit, spit, sputter, sputter. Ran out of gas.

And it's 5:00pm on Friday night. I have to get dinner started. Guess I'm off to the Depot bright and early tomorrow!

~~~(meh)

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Sea Inspired Jewelry Pieces

Sea Inspired Jewelry
Originally uploaded by mornindew2822

Another of my "use what you've got" challenges. I made these without spending one red cent- it amazes me the stuff I collect and then don't use! Can you imagine every single ingredient that went into making these has been sitting in my supply boxes for close to two years now while I was totally uninspired to anything with it!

Necklace and earrings set made using various greenish-blue turquoise beads with lots of matrix (the more mottled the better, I love it!) , bronze freshwater pearls, Hill Tribe fine silver beads (starfish, nautilus and scallop shells) and sand dollar toggle style clasp.

Up for sale in my Etsy shop now.

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Tiny Sea Glass "Mosaic" Pendants

Tiny Sea Glass "Mosaic" Pendants
Originally uploaded by mornindew2822

These are some of the pieces I've been working on this week. I have a self-imposed "use what you've got" challenge going on and all the stuff I'm making this week is done without spending a single penny for anything new.

I've taken bits of beachcombed pottery where the pattern was too worn for it to be used on it's own for a jewelry piece and decorated them with teeny, tiny bits of beautiful sea glass in rich, vibrant colors. The end result is, I think, mini mosaic art pieces you can wear!

My favorite is I Feel Teal. The shade on the (perfectly round) sea glass ball is so rich and soothing while the pottery shards are a cool robin's egg and almost Tiffany blue.

These can all be found in my Etsy shop.

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Happy Birthday To Me!

Well not really, my birthday was the day after Christmas, but I wanted to share the pendant I made for myself. I am always working to finish custom orders and never make anything lovely for myself. This is the first time I've tried soldering more than one component together and I'm pretty proud of myself. I cut out the backing on the sea glass pieces so the light could shine through. Coke bottle green and frosty white sea glass are bezel set in fine and sterling silver. The pretty little shell is called a pearl umbonium and I have them for sale here. What do you think?

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