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Sea Glass
My husband Steve and
I like to walk
on the beach. When we lived near the Delaware River I noticed colorful,
frosted gems lying in the sand, catching the sunlight and realized it was
sea glass. Some of the more rare pieces I keep, but I also enjoy
incorporating sea glass into my jewelry designs. I adhere to the North
American Sea Glass Association's
Code of Ethics, which basically means that I never tumble, add
artificial colorants, treat sea glass chemically with etching compounds,
or use artificially created sea glass.
So what is it? Sea glass (also called beach glass) is
just pieces of discarded bottles, tableware, & windows that can be found
anywhere there is a large enough body of water and a history of garbage
dumping. I have found sea glass in Delaware, California, Bermuda, and
Barbados. The shards of glass are pummeled by sand and waves for many
years, which naturally smoothes the edges and etches the surface. The more
wave action on the shoreline and the longer the glass is in the water, the
smoother the pieces of glass tend to be. No two pieces are exactly alike,
and there are many different colors.
Common Colors
(mostly from beer bottles)
white/clear
bright green
brown
Semi-Rare Colors
cobalt & cornflower blue
seafoam green (from Coca-Cola & white wine bottles)
aqua (from Mason jars)
dark green & olive green (from red wine bottles)
amber
lime green
teal (from a bottling company in Bermuda)
gray
lavender (from World War era glass; the glass component manganese was
unavailable from Germany during the wars and the substitute turned
lavender with prolonged UV exposure)
Rare Colors
orange
pink
red (from tail lights of old boats and cars).
You can find out more about sea glass from
the following books:
Pure Sea Glass by
Richard LaMotte, photography by Celia Pearson
Sea Glass Chronicles: Whispers
from the Past
by C. S. Lambert, photography by Pat Hanbery.
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Bali Silver
The sterling
silver Bali beads that I use are handcrafted in Bali, Indonesia by
exceptional artisans. Each bead is cast into two parts that are hand
decorated with ball granulations and wires which are first glued into
place and then soldered to the bead. Sounds like a lot of work to me, but
the results are so beautiful.
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Karen Hill Tribe Silver
Created by
family-artisans of the Karen (kuh-REHN) tribes in northern Thailand, these
beads contain "high content" silver (above sterling's 92.5%). Hill Tribe
families use traditional methods passed down from generation to
generation. Each design is made by only one family, and the artisans are
paid a fair wage for their products. Too often entire villages in this
region are seduced into growing illicit drugs in order to survive. There
are also cases of individual families allowing their children to be sent
away to large cities for factory work. Many times they are deceived by the
employer, and girls are sent to work for the prostitution industry.
Working silver has become a valuable alternative to these practices, while
sustaining a traditional craft and providing the Hill Tribe people with a
reliable source of income.
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AnneMade Fine Silver
 I
use PMC (Precious Metal Clay) brand of silver clay, the coolest jewelry
making products to hit the market during my generation! Made by
Mitsubishi Materials of Japan, PMC consists of tiny particles of pure
silver recycled from the film industry that are held together by water and an
organic clay binder similar to flour. Silver clay can be worked like modeling clay: rolled,
stretched, imprinted, squirted through a syringe, you name it. It takes on texture
from any object it touches, which yields some very interesting results.
After
the clay is dry it gets fired in a digitally-controlled kiln to
burn off the binder and sinter (fuse) the metal particles. The result is a
solid, 99.9% pure silver object referred to as fine silver.
(Sterling is 92.5% silver.) To finish I use a wire
brush to remove loose particles and give the piece a satin
finish, then I burnish the piece in a rotary tumbler with stainless steel shot to
polish the surface. I oxidize (antique) most of my fine silver pieces,
which brings out the surface texture and gives a rich patina.
Stones that are fired in place must be able to withstand the extreme heat
of firing, so I use cubic zirconia in my fine silver pieces. CZs
are created at a high temperature and are free from inclusions that can
lead to breakage during firing, so they are beautiful, brilliant, and
perfect for this application.
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Lampwork: Handmade Glass Beads
 Flameworked
beads are one of my favorite things. The tip of a glass rod is heated in
a torch flame (the "lamp"), then the molten glass is wound around a metal
rod (mandrel) and the surface of the resulting bead is shaped and
decorated before being popped in a hot kiln. Beads are kiln-annealed
(cooled very slowly) to remove internal stress and give strength to the
glass, then removed from the mandrel and cleaned.
The
glass that lampworkers typically use is "soft" soda-lime glass made by
Effetre, Lauscha, and Bullseye. Borosilicate glass (Pyrex) requires an
even hotter flame, but these beads have a beautiful range of soft ethereal
colors that cannot be duplicated in soft glass.
Some of the lampwork
beads I use are my own creation, but most of the
lampwork in my designs is from other artists.
I use lampwork only made by domestic artists in order to ensure fair trade
and high quality. Lampwork is expensive compared to other types of
beads, but these little pieces of art are worth every penny!
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Jewelry and
website design
copyright 2009 Anne Hussey
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