Sunday, September 2, 2012

A Treasure Hunting Success

So let me first start by telling you all that yesterday was a beach treasure hunting success.  Matt, Jonathan, and I found so many really cool shells and pieces of beach glass!  Matt even snagged 3 sand dollars which I'll be bleaching (and removing dreadlocks from) really soon!  I've had several people ask me to clarify what exactly beach glass is, so let me do that now.  Beach glass is essentially natures way of taking our "litter" and making it into something beautiful.  Say someone pitches a glass wine bottle overboard on a booze cruise.  That bottle then sinks eventually to the ocean floor where it hits a piece of coral or a rock and shatters.  Those little pieces then slowly get sort of tumbled by the ocean waves and buffed by the sand until the come out looking like a frosty piece of heaven!



We find pieces in lots of different colors, and the picture here doesn't even really do them justice.  They're just gorgeous!  My favorite of this handful is the one in the top left of the screen.  I love it when we find pieces like the long one in the middle because it's fun trying to speculate as to what broke apart to make that color.  The browns and greens and clears are pretty self-explanatory, but when you pick up something that's lime green or violet blue or teal there's no end to the possibilities of it's origin!  (Jonathan and Matt particularly like to assume they must have come off a pirate ship or something...).

So what's the key to finding beach glass?  Well, it's simple.  Walk around in the surf or in tide pools and look for things that texturally don't match (that's a good way to find cool shells too!).  If a color pops out a you as something out of the ordinary, that could be something cool.  But not all pieces of broken glass hanging out in the surf are "good" pieces.  They have to be rounded on the edges (look closer at the piece on the far bottom right), and BOTH sides have to be "roughed up" as we say.  It shouldn't be shiny or slick at all.   The bigger the "good" piece the better, because bigger good pieces are hard to find.  Usually they're pretty well broken down once they make it to shore and have been buffed out enough.  So when we find larger pieces or pieces that are thicker, we get really excited.  We also get pumped when we find those violet pieces or the ones that are slightly bluish green but almost clear.  Those are hard to find!

So once you've collected hundreds of pieces of beach glass, what in the world do you do with them??  Well, there's lots of possibilities.  For me, they give me jewelry inspiration and eventually I'm gonna start incorporating some of the pieces into my designs.  You can also fill vases and bowls with them (growing up I saw someone Bethany Beach, Michigan using them to fill empty lamps...very clever...).  Michelle had an awesome idea of taking the pieces and gluing them to a big wooden W (for Wells).  I'm thinking I might steal that from her.  I've got big plans for my huge stash! 

So there ya have it...a little lesson in the art of beach glass.  You'll never look at a piece of broken glass in the surf the same way again!  So I'll leave you guys with this picture "montage" of our beach finds.  Enjoy your Labor Day Americans!  For us Bahamians it's just another day in paradise...


Random bivalves is super cool colors


Branch Coral, Beach Glass, and other random cool finds


Raw sand dollars with seaweed dreadlocks...  Yes I'll bleach them and make them look pretty soon!


Some sort of sweet welk-like shell and more spirals


A crab claw from outer space...


1 comment:

  1. So pretty! I never have much luck finding sea glass. I've seen some pretty jewelry pieces made from it.

    I've enjoyed peeking around your blog, reading your new adventures. I'm happily following along. :)

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