Sea Glass Festival

I spent a lovely, albeit brief weekend up in Erie, PA attending the 4th Annual North American Sea Glass Festival. It was an inspiring weekend celebrating everything sea glass from lectures, vendors, collectors and a shard of the year contest.

Above is a brief selection of my own beach glass collection with pieces found mostly on the southern shores of Lake Erie and maybe a piece or 2 from Southern California beaches.

My latest beach glass pendant now for sale in my etsy shop. It is an authentic piece of brown glass found on the shores of Lake Erie then wrapped by me with silver wire.

Finally, because glass is not the only treasure you can find on the beach, here is my collection of pottery shards also found near Lake Erie.

Architecture Inspiration

I believe inspiration can be found everywhere as long as we look for. But sometimes, it finds you instead. Sorting through my images this week I started finding connections between my photography and jewelry, especially my paper bangle series.

Above is a recent image where I captured the window of a lighthouse keeper's house. I loved not only the charming tiny painted boats on the shutter, but also the colorfully painted framing and smooth texture of the wood.

Here is the bracelet I created using wood patterned paper. The appearance of the wood grain gives it a natural look even though it is coating a resin bangle.

The shot of the actual lighthouse shows the contrast of the smooth exterior surface and the rough texture of the brick framing the door and windows.

Similarly, this bangle, which I covered in brick patterned paper, gives the illusion of texture despite it's smooth texture.

Finally, here is an image I took of a winery that mimics a French stone exterior. The use of the stone to create a building that seems so many centuries older than it really is intriguing to me.

Collecting these images and reflecting on my own experience as a teacher in architecture museums, I can now see that long hind sighted road that led to my current creative inspirations.

What are your inspirations? Where did they come from?

New Beach Glass Pendants

After my initial experimentation with wire-wrapped beach glass pendants, I decided to try creating more. This time, I played with the wire a little more designing patterns on the pendant. Below, I used three simply colored pieces and then used the wire to create impact

I also worked on gluing smaller pieces of glass onto a larger beach glass stone. Then, I used very little of the wire to highlight the glass for these pendants.

Do you like? I am thinking of selling them in my etsy shop ranging in price from $20 - $30 each, including a silver chain. Would you buy one?

Chandelier Collage

Sometime last year, the friend, who commissioned these black and white collages, wanted me to do another piece that was similar but had a pop of color. She also wanted it to be a larger piece and to include an image of a chandelier.

Above is the background that I started with. I used paper from the previous 3 collages I had done for her but also added some book pages, toile patterned tissue paper and handmade papers.

Then I added the color contrast by using turquoise colored paper as a background for the chandelier image.

Finally, I used stick on jewels to decorate the chandelier and the border of the collage to give it a sparkly appearance.

Beach Glass Pendants

Oh, creating how I have missed you! Work, travel and other projects this spring have left me with little time to create art. That is why I intentionally set aside a mere 2 hours and signed up for a local beach glass wire-wrapped pendant workshop.

Below are the pendants I created in the workshop.

The first one I glued a small piece of found pottery on top of blue beach glass. I wire wrapped the entire pendant then crimped the wires in the front to make waves before twisting the wire at the top to create the bale.

The second one was a little trickier. It involved creating a springy coil from the wire then wrapping it around a piece of beach glass. I liked the shape of the beach glass, but it took lots of patience to get the coiled wire to stay wrapped around it. I finished it by wrapping more wire in a diagonal pattern and adding a little spiral to front.