Cobalt Sea Glass - Where does it come from?

One of my personal favorite colors of seaglass is dark blue, otherwise known as Cobalt or Cornflower Blue. There is something about that bright yet deep blue color that is just so....well...relaxing. 

Cobalt has been in use before Roman times with the discovery of the cobalt mines in Central Africa. Did you know that Minnesota has the biggest supply of Cobalt in the US?

Cobalt and Cornflower Blue are made by adding Cobalt Oxide to molten glass and was originally made to protect the contents of a bottle from the sun. Exposure to bright light or sun could change the effectiveness of a medicine that was in a bottle. Cornflower Blue was made primarily for Milk Of Magnesia bottles where cobalt was reserved for bottles that contained poison. As there were many types and brands of poison produced throughout history, the Cornflower Blue of the Milk Of Magnesia bottle became the harder to find of the two. Both colors rank as 'Rare' on the Seaglass Rarity Color Chart.
(source: Pure Sea Glass)

Who knows....maybe I find it so calming as that is the feeling you get after taking Milk Of Magnesia!

My Milk Of Magnesia Bottle probably dates anywhere from 1928 to the late 1930's due to the 'M' stamp (Maryland Glass Company), and the sideways number 8.
(source: Society For Historical Archaeology)

So after ceremoniously finishing a bottle of Milk Of Magnesia, the bottle is tossed into the nearest dump and some of this refuse is hauled out to sea and dumped, or perhaps it gets buried in a land fill that is next to the ocean and then it starts to erode into the sea with the coming and going of the tides - think Dead Horse Bay (see an earlier blog post on this place here). After about 20-50 years of tumbling around on the ocean floor it gets broken and sanded down and WHA LAH! Blue Seaglass is born! 

Then some very lucky person, such as myself, finds it along the Jersey Shore and makes a beautiful necklace for some lucky person to wear...such as yourself!

Blue Milk Of Magnesia Seaglass Necklace 

To see more beautiful Seaglass Jewelry, visit Handmade Jewelry Haven here!

To learn some more interesting history of the Milk Of Magnesia history and to see some beautiful examples of blue seaglass, I have a cool downloadable .pdf.
Just tell me where to send it!

Get your free download here!

Also, come watch our short video on Cobalt Seaglass here!

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Aqua Sea Glass - Where Does It Come From?

So I wanted to share with you a super cool find that we made while on our last seaglass trip back in March to the Jersey Shore.

We were wrapping up our beach foray for the day and my son looks over and finds what is left of a broken bottle. I was watching him from further down the beach as he tossed it down, and then seemed to reconsider and picked it back up and puts it in one of his cavernous pockets.

As you can see by the photo, you can clearly make out the 'S and possibly the letter before it is a 'R' or a 'B'. 

After doing some reading online and finding this really cool Historical Bottle Website, I found out that fonts that have those little 'appendages' on them are called 'Serif', the word being of uncertain origin, possibly from the Dutch word schreef meaning "line" or pen-stroke and were typical for bottles made between 1820 - 1910. 

Recently I had just gotten the 'Holy Grail' of Seaglassing books, 'Pure Seaglass', that was recommended to me almost unanimously from one of my seaglassing groups, and it had a wealth of information on bottles of that time frame, one being the medicinal bottle. 
I started searching for bottles that would end in a ---R'S and after some time, found AYER'S SARSAPARILLA. The picture matched my fragment! 

James Cook Ayer was a fascinating character! Born in 1818, his dad passed away when he was 7 and he was sent to live with his uncle and by 19 he was working in an apothecary (drug store). At 22 he went into business for himself making all types of concoctions that supposedly cured everything from the ague to baldness! He eventually wanted to follow in his uncles footsteps and go into politics, winning the nomination for the Republican seat for Congress, for Lowell Mass. He lost his bid however and the rejection was apparently too much for him to handle as his obituary stated that opposition to his candidacy was so strong he became unhinged. He was so violent he was confined to an insane asylum in New Jersey for months.
James Cook Ayer died at the age of 60 on July 3, 1878 in Winchendon, Mass.

The town of Ayer, Mass., was named after him.

So my bottle fragment is circa 1852 -1870 

So this was an excellent opportunity to show you how this: 

gets broken and tossed (or broken while being tossed) and looks like this: 

and finely after tossing around in the ocean for approximately 50 -100 years it can look like this: 

Then I find it and make it into something beautiful like this:

Light Blue Seaglass Necklace

Want to see something totally cool that I found too? I have a free download of the original 1860 NY Times Ayer's Sarsaparilla Ad!
Just tell me where to email it!

Get your free download here!

We thought that this was such a cool post that we made a short YouTube Video of it!
Come check it out here to hear my weird voice! 
Aqua Sea Glass Video

Want to see more pretty Seaglass Jewelry? Visit Handmade Jewelry Haven here!

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Sea Glassing in New Jersey

Oh wow. It has been over a MONTH since I have posted! I bet you all thought that I got sucked into that famous north east under tow! 
Well, I didn't. I got sucked into 'life'.
Those of you who have experienced it will understand. The rest.....well........

Let me start with the trip. It was AMAZING!! You just cannot find seaglass in Florida like you can from up north. Hands down. Up north glassing has it covered.
You could live an entire lifetime in Florida and not find the treasures that you find up north!

The boys dropped Bella and I off in Bay Head and we hit the gate running. Bella found piece after glorius piece within 15 minutes. Our time was limited, so we called it a day after about an hour between the jettys.

Our next foray was at the beach at Spring Lake, and although that is a beautiful spot, we were not as lucky as we were in Bay Head. 

After visiting the Twin Lights, we headed over to the Coast Guard base at Sandy Hook. The Bay Side yielded the most interesting pieces, however, not what a 'seasoned glasser' would consider a 'finished' piece. Christian, my 15 year old, surprisingly, really got into this section finding my first violet seaglass.

After that we went to the ocean side and the three of us split up and scoured the mostly empty beach (the boy was done at this point and decided to wait in the car).
We ended up meeting the most pleasant woman named Pam (you can see her beautiful posts at @pammybaby2 on Instagram), who glassed this beach weekly and thought nothing to give us her entire haul for the day! Only up north will you find such generosity! I have said it before and I will say it again, New Jersey peeps RULE!!

The one not so great thing about our visit was that we did not get to visit Glass Bottle Beach at Dead Horse Bay.  Due to other constraints, we could not fit this in on the day we had allotted for it. So...there is always..'next time'.

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Goin' Glassing

Well, it is that time of year when we close up shop, pack our bags and hop in the car to do a little 'glassing.

Glass Bottle Beach

What is glassing you say? Well it is what a seasoned beach person says when they are going to look for seaglass. Kind of like 'Gone Fishin'. This year we will be making a journey that we have been wanting to make for awhile, only reading about it on various sea glass sites and journals. In addition to visiting our dear Jersey Shore, we will be making a visit to Glass Bottle Beach at Dead Horse Bay. This particular beach is near Brooklyn NY and is so called as it was the site of several factories, many of them having the distinction of being 'glue' factories, around the turn of the century. At that time when horse and buggy reigned supreme, it was not uncommon to see dead horses along the side of the road. The carcases were eventually hauled to one of the many glue plants to...well...make glue. After the automobile became the choice mode of transportation, the surrounding area of the bay evolved into a giant land fill until it closed in the 1950's. Now, the bare land is a somewhat macabre attraction for bottle collectors as the now busted open land fill churns out into the bay and then is brought back in again to settle with the incoming tide. The city's history literally washes out and then back in again, filling the beach with shards of antique pottery, junk and of course, bottles, hence the name, Glass Bottle Beach.
Anyway, I have always wanted to 'pick' this particular spot and now about this time next week, I will be there! 
Anyway, I hope to come back with many tales of wonder from our excursion and in the meantime, if you want to read a little more of this well kept 'secret', you can read about it 
on the Atlas Obscura site here.

Seaglass Pendant

To see examples of how seaglass can be made into beautiful jewelry, visit Handmade Jewelry Haven's Etsy Site here. We will be putting the shop in 'Vacation Mode' while we are gone but will reopen the following week when we return.

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Beading To Relax

One of the reasons I love making jewelry so much is that it is relaxing. Especially doing kumihimo as it is so time consuming and repetitive. I get a design in my head, usually after several nights mulling this idea or that idea over and over before drifting off to sleep. Then I pick a night, gather my supplies, measure and cut the thread, loop it in half, tie it off, then string it onto the loom. I then do a few rounds without the beads, just to give me an end to be able to glue into an end cap. I then take the rest of the night, maybe two, to string all eight cords with the required amount of beads, around 120-130 per cord. I then start

Copper Wrapped Seaglass Pendant

weaving on the loom with the beads. It is very repetitive and you just start to go through the motions and your mind just starts to wander. Pretty soon you have a few inches on and it is starting to look beautiful! Then you just keep going until after a few hours, it is done! I am currently working on a Kumihimo Necklace to go with a beautiful copper wire wrapped piece of seaglass that I got from my cousin in New Jersey.  
I love that meditative state that you get in when doing something over and over. Your muscles start to relax and you just go with it. This week it has come in particularily handy as I have been having a rather 'trying' time lately.

To see some of my Kumihimo designs, come visit Handmade Jewelry Haven's Etsy Page here.

What do you like to do to relax?

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