A new technique

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.