A couple of years ago my husband and I decided to switch-up date day (date day is Friday when the kids go to day-care after school and my husband is off work). Our usual date day was normally a trip into town and out for lunch. I’m not sure what it was that made us change it up (I guess we were getting bored) but we decided to start taking coastal trips. Living in Northern Ireland we are never too far away from our gorgeous coast and the Irish Sea so I’m not sure why we didn’t make the switch earlier.
It was on these trips that I started to notice lots of little bits of glass in between the pebbles and shells, mostly greens and browns. After doing my research I discovered that this is glass that has made its way into the ocean (unfortunately just thrown over ships or dumped out at sea and just blown in from land). The glass may have come from medicine bottles, drinking bottles, windows, cars, vases etc. The earliest bits of sea glass found dates back to 1700's to pieces from the present day. It is sometimes referred as Mermaid tears or the gems of the ocean – both of these sound very romantic and I love them both.
Once the glass enters the ocean it ends up on a journey with the tides, it gets smashed and broken up into smaller sizes. It gets weathered by the salt water and after many years being tumbled in our great big ocean it takes on a smooth rounded shape and becomes frosted in appearance.
Eventually the sea glass ends up on our beaches, which I am very grateful for as it is removing it from the sea and preventing it being consumed by marine life. Then people like me and you get to recycle it and keep it as a piece of treasure from the ocean. I like to believe it has been storing up all that energy from each tumble from the waves and that each piece holds that energy waiting to be transferred to you it’s new owner. Helping to give you comfort and strength when needed. I constantly find myself rubbing the sea glass from my own pendant or ring in times of anxiety (with COVID-19 I’m not going to lie to you, there has been many times) and I do find it comforting.
This year will now be the third year of collecting sea glass and it has really become a family affair. The kids get really competitive. If one of them finds a cobalt blue (rare colour) then the search is really on lol. We have yet to find some pinks, reds or purples but I have no doubt when we do there will be lots of screaming (it will be great to capture it on video).
At the start of our journey we were just collecting the glass. We didn’t really know what to do with it all. The first thing I did was make a very bad sea glass Christmas tree and I used loose pieces to help display my sea life jewellery collection during my Christmas open night. It was the girls that first asked could they have a piece put on a necklace. I did this by just wire wrapping the sea glass and I made them both chokers and a ring. I soon moved on to wrapping the sea glass in recycled silver and attaching it to a silver chain. My sea glass collection was born……. I wanted to share with others what I feel when I’m wearing my own sea glass jewellery…… that energy and connection to the sea!
With the introduction of plastic, sea glass is getting harder and harder to find, but as long as we keep finding pieces, I will keep supplying you all with sea glass jewellery from the Irish Sea.
If you have any more questions about sea glass don't hesitate to ask in the comments below or drop me an email. I would love to answer your questions. If you would like to see the different steps of some pieces being made, then follow me on IG here and if you sign up to my newsletter you will be one of the first to hear about any offers and new collections coming out.
Well that’s all for today so until next week take care and keep sparkling.
Katrina xx