Day at the beach...SCORE! And a new toy!

First off, beach finds from yesterday. I hit the beach at low tide finally (those online tide charts are so handy!) and it wasn't too cold. Here is one of the best finds of the day, which was this lime green patterned piece that's now one of my new favorites.
When I had first arrived at this beach (where we found 99% of the day's glass), there was this neurotic woman who was dashing all over the place picking up small bits of something and hiding it in her hand like the nearest person who might be looking for the same thing would mug her for it or something...I discovered she wasn't picking up sea glass, but rather bits of brick and shells. Seriously, this is why I take a ridiculously large bag. Anyone wants to mug me, feel free, I'll hit you with 5lbs of sea glass and then pelt you with any nearby rocks. Shows you. Anyway, Neurotic Woman and I were heading in the same direction down the beach, but then I found this!
My third marble, and second from this beach! I started jumping for joy and celebrating. Well, Neurotic Woman just turned around and ran away as fast as she possibly could. This is now the second time I have managed to scare someone away from the beach just by being myself. Also in that picture is an awesome piece of sea pottery, and the back is marked Greenwood Trent.
I also found my first piece of true teal, one of the hardest colors to find in the blue category. This is a lovely piece and only found at the end of the day, far far away from the other awesome finds at the same beach.
Some other finds. Who's ever lost a cell phone at the beach? Well...I found it. haha. The knob is pretty cool and the other thing is bronze and copper.

All finds for the day! After a day like that it's really hard not to hop in the car and go back, especially since gas is now $1.81 (compared to $3.81 when I was going back in the spring!)

Now, new toy! I finally bought a handheld UV light to test for uranium glass (better known as Vaseline glass). My first sea glass post back in March mentions Vaseline glass because I suspected that one of the pieces I found at Charleston beach on March 7 was a piece of Vaseline glass. (Below, it's the light green piece near the center).
It barely glowed at all when I held it up to my mom's blacklight lightbulb from the 70s.
So...while I was disappointed, I tried to tell myself it really was there, and freaked out about it anyway. On March 10, I found a piece that I suspected glowed (below, next to the cobalt blue pieces)...

...and I found another piece on March 11 (below under the marbles)...

...but under the blacklight there was NO GLOW AT ALL. So no pictures.

I had better luck with finding glowing things while bottle digging. They showed up slightly under the light

And need I say that unscrewing a lightbulb in the dark stairwell and screwing in a blacklight which gets impossibly hot after 30 seconds is a huge pain in the behind for a glow that sucks anyway? I held off on testing this beautiful heartbreaking shard I dug in August until I got a REAL light.


So finally, after months of disappointments, I got my handheld UV light from apexminerals on Ebay. And here's the difference between a normal $5 blacklight and a UV light:

And I was in for a surprise with my sea glass collection!

The two on top, Charleston Beach finds from March 7 and March 10, and the large frosty one on the bottom was found on March 11. I also found that old clear glass that will turn lavender/purple in the sun turns light yellow under UV light, and some of my clear buttons with a quartz content turn orange. Awesome. When I get some extra time I'm going to make a video on the difference between black lights and UV "black light".

After I run all my errands today I'm going to poke through my collection of sea glass from this year and thin it out a bit and put it up for grabs on ebay (or Etsy...haven't decided). I have a few pieces of plain sea pottery/porcelain and of course many shards of beach glass that's still glassy...I'm sure there's some mosaic artists out there who'll have a field day!