Sea Glass Mobile

I love to collect sea glass– it’s like areal life treasure hunt. Although in my case, I technically mostly collect river glass, but people don’t know what you are talking about when you say river glass. It looks exactly the same, but I find it along a rocky river near my house. I actually think it’s easier to find near rivers because there seem to be far less people searching it out. In the beginning, I had so few pieces that it was precious and I kept in in glass jars in the window, but as I discovered river glass and started to find more and more I decided that I wanted to make something with it. Generally I think sea glass belongs near a window so you can admire it’s transparency so I decided on a mobile. You can drill holes in sea glass, but it’s tricky, especially with small piece, and not something I would allow a child to do. You could pre-drill holes and lets kids string them, but I decided to wire wrap them instead. It avoided drilling and I like the way it looks as well! I am in no way a wire wrap expert, and I wanted as much of the sea glass as possible to be visible, so I just wrapped each piece until it felt secure and added loops for hanging. Hung with twine on a piece of driftwood (ok just a stick from my backyard…) the result is beautiful!

Materials:

• sea (or river) glass
• thin jewelry wire
• needle nose pliers (jewelry making pliers are ideal, but needle nose will do the job)
• twine
• stick/ driftwood

Method:

Sort out and arrange the sea glass you’d like to use. I organized mine by color and then descending size.

Wrap your first piece. Wrap the wire around the glass just until it feels secure. As you are wrapping make a little loop at the bottom of the piece, this is what you will connect the next piece to. Twist the two ends together at the top of the piece and make another little loop. This is what you will hang the glass from.

Do the same for all of the pieces in the strand, except before you close the top loop, thread it through the loop on the piece above it.

Repeat for as many strands as you want, then tie them to a stick with some twine.

Hang in a place with lots of light!