Trying something new is always exciting and challenging
for me. When Carolyn from church gave me
some sea glass to work with, something that I’ve never done before, I was
excited and nervous at the same time. It
took me a while to figure out the best way to wrap the glass to enhance the
beauty of it. Then getting the
creativity to flow through my hands was another challenge. I was relieved to
find that it’s a skill that I liked learning and using.
Since I started making jewelry I have felt like the more
skills I have, the better jewelry designer I can be. I’ve learned many techniques so far and feel
like the more I learn the more I want to learn. I just wasn’t ready for this
new technique. It was definitely more abstract than I have ever done.
Sea glass was kind of a foreign object to me as far as
jewelry making goes and I was happy to have something different, however I
didn’t have a clue what I should do with it.
I knew that I should wrap it with wire but how. I’m used to nice even
shaped beads with a hole in the middle; this glass didn’t have a hole in the
middle. So, it was time for me to learn a new technique.
The creative process always amazes me because everyone
goes through a different process to create.
Some people just dive right in and do it, some draw out their design,
and some make a prototype. Instead of
doing the above, I do research, find the techniques that others use, look at
photos of similar type work, watch You Tube videos, read books and then let it
all sink into my brain for a while. Once
it all coalesces in my brain I start to think about how I’m going to make my
project. Sometimes it takes a day and
sometimes it takes months. I think wire
wrapping the sea glass took me about 2 weeks to actually decide how I was going
to do this.
You can see the results in the pictures on this
page. Once I started wrapping sea glass
I couldn’t stop. I love to do it and I
love the results. My favorite is the
long white piece shown with the orange background. That piece of glass has a design pressed into
it. I would really like to know what
kind of thing that glass started out as.
Thanks to Carolyn for the inspiration to learn a new
skill to put into my toolbox of jewelry techniques and all the beautiful pieces
of sea glass.
