Sea Glass Pendants

I have finally got round to making some more Sea Glass pendants in the last couple of days. When I found the first lot of Sea Glass in Spain a few years ago I varnished it all so as it looked more like normal glass. I made pendants out of the larger pieces and still have lots of tiny pieces to one day make something with! This time I have not varnished them and have kept their frosted look.

I have just watched some tutorials on wire work so am going to try out some other stuff now with the wire. Watch this space!

Thanks for looking :) xxx

"Sea glass" is physically and chemically weathered glass found on beaches along bodies of salt water. These weathering processes produce natural frosted glass. "Genuine sea glass" can be collected as a hobby and can be used to make jewellery. Sea glass takes 20 to 30 years, and sometimes as much as 50 years, to acquire its characteristic texture and shape. Sea glass begins as normal shards of broken glass that are then persistently tumbled and ground until the sharp edges are smoothed and rounded. In this process, the glass loses its slick surface but gains a frosted appearance over many years.

Naturally produced sea glass ("genuine sea glass") originates as pieces of glass from broken bottles, broken tableware, or even shipwrecks, which are rolled and tumbled in the ocean for years until all of their edges are rounded off, and the slickness of the glass has been worn to a frosted appearance.

Sea glass can be found all over the world, but the beaches of the North East United States, Bermuda, Fort Bragg, California, North Carolina beaches, Scotland, North West England, Mexico, Hawaii, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Nova Scotia, Australia, Italy and Southern Spain are famous for their bounty of sea glass, bottles, bottle lips and stoppers, art glass, marbles, and pottery shards. The best times to look are during spring tides especially perigean and proxigean tides, and during the first low tide after a storm.

The colour of sea glass is determined by its original source. Most sea glass comes from bottles, but it can also come from jars, plates, windows, windshields, ceramics or sea pottery. The most common colours of sea glass are kelly green, brown, and white (clear). These colours come from bottles used by companies that sell beer, juices, and soft drinks. The clear or white glass comes from clear plates and glasses, windshields, windows, and assorted other sources.

Uncommon colours of sea glass include a type of green, which comes primarily from early to mid-1900s Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper, and RC Cola bottles as well as beer bottles. Soft green colours could come from bottles that were used for ink, fruit, and baking soda. These colours are found once in every 50 to 100 pieces.

Even less common colours include jade, amber (from bottles for whiskey, medicine, spirits, and early bleach bottles), golden amber or amberina (mostly used for spirit bottles), lime green (from soda bottles during the 1960s), forest green, and ice- or soft blue (from soda bottles, medicine bottles, ink bottles, and fruit jars from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, windows, and windshields). These colours are found about once for every 25 to 100 pieces of sea glass found.

Purple sea glass is very uncommon, as is citron, opaque white (from milk glass), cobalt and cornflower blue (from early Milk of Magnesia bottles, poison bottles, artwork, and Bromo-Seltzer and Vicks VapoRub containers), and aqua (from Ball Mason jars and 19th century glass bottles). These colours are found once for every 200 to 1,000 pieces found.

Extremely rare colours include gray, pink (often from Great Depression-era plates), teal (often from Mateus wine bottles), black (older, very dark olive green glass), yellow (often from 1930s Vaseline containers), turquoise (from tableware and art glass), red (often from old Schlitz bottles, car tail lights, dinnerware or from nautical lights, it is found once in about every 5,000 pieces), and orange (the least common type of sea glass, found once in about 10,000 pieces). These colours are found once for every 1,000 to 10,000 pieces collected. Some shards of black glass are quite old, originating from thick eighteenth-century gin, beer and wine bottles.