Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Fort Rodd Hill/Fisgard Lighthouse

I am thrilled to announce that my sea glass jewellery will be in the gift shop out at Fort Rodd Hill and Fisgard Lighthouse this summer.  This is a satellite shop of the Coast Collective (where I also have some new pieces).  Fort Rodd Hill and Fisgard Lighthouse are two National Historic Sites located in one beautiful park near the Esquimalt Lagoon.  If you've never explored it, I highly recommend it.  (I had never been out there until I went to drop off my inventory, and it is just lovely!)

I have created several new pieces of sea glass, or beach glass, jewellery for this location.  We'll start with the pendants.

(Remember, you can always click on these pictures to enlarge them.)

First up is a double scroll and zig zag design of silver-plated copper wire on white glass.


This lovely deep green piece luckily wound up being pretty on both sides, so it can be worn either way.  I apologize for the quality of the photo.  I've already handed this piece off to the gift shop, so I can't take another.  (silver-plated copper wire.)




I also did a few silver-plated copper wire wraps with charms.


The first features a white freshwater pearl set against a rippling wrap.


The next is a classic cage-style wrap featuring a large starfish charm.


And the final silver-plated copper piece features a free form wrap with ripples and a large spiral, with a large starfish charm.


Next up are my new brass pendants.

This one is a fairly simple wrap featuring a double scroll at the top.  This piece of sea glass was fun because it had two ridges, so I was able to snug some wire in between.



The next piece is another reversible one.  The shape of this piece of sea glass reminds me of a shark's tooth.



I have a couple brass pieces with charms as well.



The first features an indigo freshwater pearl and a fairly minimalistic wrap.





The second one features a large golden starfish charm with a classic cage style wrap and a large scroll at the top.


The next few are in a new type of wire I recently bought on Salt Spring Island.  It's a really neat golden gunmetal.

The first wrap kind of reminds me of a leaf, the way the lines curve down towards the center.


The next is another that could be reversible.  The side I intended for the front features smooth lines and a spiral, but I liked all the zigs and zags on the back as well.


The final gunmetal piece is a simple double scroll wrap but it's on a beautiful big piece of bottle-green glass.  This green is a lot warmer in tone than the one I posted earlier and paired with silver.  I think the gunmetal suits the colour quite nicely.





Finally, I have some pendants in copper.

The first is a cute little pendant of white sea glass with a double spiral heart.


The next few all have charms.

The first one features an indigo freshwater pearl.


The next features a teal Swarovski crystal bicone and a clam shell charm on top of a squiggly wrap.


And the final one is a cage-style wrap with a large starfish charm of a different type than the golden or silver ones.



I also decided to do something new for the cords I hang them on.  Typically at markets I would have waxed cotton cord to offer, and I would just tie a double slip knot to make the length adjustable.  That doesn't look super nice when there are several pieces on a display though, so I decided to put the extra time into attaching clasps to all the cords, and I am soooooo glad I did.  I think it looks just fantastic.  I guess in part it's that it's kind of unremarkable (though the bright metal against the black cord does look nice), but it just looks so much more polished to me now, like something that you would see in a store.



I would like you to note that I used split rings for all the attachments.  They're the double coil type, so they're a lot more work to open and to attach other pieces to, but they don't have a gap that could spread open like with jump rings, so they won't just come apart.  I don't know about you, but I've bought lots of jewellery only to lose pieces because a jump ring opens, so I always try to use split rings and am even replacing the jump rings on some jewellery I've bought.


I also made a few new pairs of earrings for Fort Rodd Hill.

The first are made with silver-plated copper wire over lovely pale blue pieces of sea glass.  I wrapped them with all sorts of wiggles to look a little like foamy waves.  I attached a dangle with a pale azure Swarovski crystal to echo the pale blue of the glass, and a white freshwater pearl perched above a spiral.


(I think they might go nicely either with the pendant with the freshwater pearl or with the wiggles and the starfish that I posted above.)

The next ones feature a spiraling design in brass wire over white sea glass, with pale rose freshwater pearls dangling below.  Those long pearls add a lot of elegance.


The final earrings are copper wire on white sea glass dangling below indigo freshwater pearls.  They're similar in design to some I'd made before, but the sea glass is a little bigger on these


All of these earrings are mounted on my new home-made earring cards.  This is a definite improvement to just attaching a price tag to one of the earrings and hanging them on a stand, don't you think?


They've got my business card on the back, and I write the materials and price on the inside.

I hope you'll come to see some of these pieces in person out at Fort Rodd Hill.  I'll post my schedule soon so you know when you can talk to me there.  (I'll post my Coast Collective shifts too.)

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