Crafty Book Review: Wire-Wrapped Sea Glass from Sea Glass Jewelry

Sea Glass Jewelry
This wire-wrapping tutorial from the Sea Glass Jewelry book is simple and beginner-friendly.

Sea Glass Jewelry

Remember how I make my own sea glass in my kid’s rock tumbler?

One of the projects that I’ve been wanting to use that sea glass for is pull cords, on account of the ceilings in my house are high and I am short.

I know several techniques for mounting objects to use as pendants, mostly involving wire-wrapping or drilling through the object, but none seemed quite right for a pull cord, which needs to withstand the force of someone tugging on it several times a day.

Instead, I’ve been using the wire-wrapping technique from the Sea Glass Jewelry book (which I received free from a publicist a couple of years ago), by Lindsay Furber and Mary Beth Beuke.

Unlike some methods that I’ve encountered, this wire-wrapping tutorial is simple and beginner-friendly–I’m NOT a jewelry-maker, so that’s a plus! I substituted a stronger wire for my own tumbled glass pendant than is called for in the book, again to make sure that the pendant could stand up to extra stress, and even so I’m a little worried that I should have double-or triple-looped the bail to make it even stronger, but the wire-wrapping itself was super easy.

I doubt that this will be a feature of all sea glass, but I really like that you can see the back of my wire-wrapped pendant through the front. This piece of tumbled glass used to be part of a vintage glass bottle that I found in my woods, and even after being tumbled for two weeks in my kid’s rock tumbler, it’s still nicely translucent.

If you’re not desperate to make your own pull cords, Sea Glass Jewelry also offers tutorials for making earrings, charm bracelets, soldered rings with bezel wire, and other techniques for wire wrapping, gluing, and drilling. It’s the reason why I am now constantly on the lookout for larger pieces of glass to scrounge–I really want to make some of the chunky jewelry in the book, too!

I received a copy of the Sea Glass Jewelry book for free, because I can’t review a book unless it’s encouraged me to play with broken glass!

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