Blog of artist Margaret Dent, who often has to battle two muses, jewelry and art, to satisfy her need to create.

Treasures on the beach

It was an awesome day to go beachcoming! Puppy needed a good long walk today so, plastic bag in hand as always, we headed to the beach. Got soaked in the rain but it didn't last long so we just kept going. And here is what I found:

A large ziploc freezer bag, about 1/4 full. That's a lot of stuff! I love looking for sea glass. It's usually such a peaceful and fun activity, as I always do it with my dog. And then there is the thrill of the "treasure hunt" - you never know what you find. Today brought some surprises. Here is the sea glass, after a good wash and 15 min soak in bacterial soap, drying on a paper towel:

As usual, the brown and clear glass forms the bulk of the find. This is pretty standard. But I also found a large amount of beautiful greens. They're not just the typical "beer bottle" greens. There are lots of olive and bluish greens. They will make awesome jewelry. I also found quite a few seafoam pieces which can be hard to find and one of them is a huge, perfectly shaped and rounded, jeweller's quality chunk! But the best is in the middle:

The first cobalt blue I have ever found! It's pretty tiny but I'm still very happy to have found it. Some unusual lime green pieces, 3 lovely lavenders (quite rare) and that dark bluish green is absolutely gorgeous. The large dark piece is actually brown but it's not your run of the mill beer bottle piece. At first I actually thought it was a pebble. Picked it up and was suprised to find it's a piece of glass. Yes, it's brown, but it has strange inclusions that i have never seen before. It would be interesting to find out how old it is.

Resting on that piece, between the two lime pieces, is my first "lucky stone", or an otolith. An ear bone from a sheephead fish. Here is an article on the otoliths. And, perhaps the best piece, is the dark, almost perfectly rectangular, smokey chunk. It is very dark, unlike most of the smokey pieces I find. Can't wait o start working on them!