You know, I am alive here. lol

Ever since I found a great outlet for my sea glass photos, I haven't had the need to show them off here......HOWEVER, if you know anything about sea glass, check out the finds I had while I was in Canada! No, I'm not disclosing the location on this one, sorry folks.

I've been really busy lately buying new stock for the vintage section of my Etsy shop. You would not believe the dresses I've had the pleasure of buying...I'll hopefully be listing more today but I also have to get ready for my mother's 50th birthday this coming Sunday!

Hey, it's Follow Friday for Twitter, if you don't follow me yet, feel free! I have two twitters as of yesterday, one for my shop and one for me.

http://twitter.com/meganmcgory
http://twitter.com/mannequinreject

Peace out girl scouts!

Getting back into the swing just in time for spring!

I am SO READY for this winter to be over. I wanted it gone sometime after I had to work through the second snowstorm. And...if you live in New England, that was a few months ago. HA.

Anyway, on Wednesday I got a phone call from the store I had some of my clock hand earrings in consignment in. They're going out of business, and they wanted me to come down and pick up what I had left. Come to find out, the two pairs I sold in August were the ONLY pairs I ever sold in that shop. I'm glad to have the remaining eight pairs back home and just finished editing the photos of them so I can get them up in my Artfire Studio. Here's a little tease of what's going up once I measure them and get them listed sometime this weekend:

Number 94


Number 104

Well, since I was heading out to Rhode Island to pick up the remaining earrings, I couldn't pass up a trip down to my favorite sea glass beach! I found two items I've never found on a beach before, a blue glass bead and the stem from a clay pipe!

And now for something a little old, but got missed because I was so incredibly sick. On my birthday, I went a little crazy and drove all the way out to the tip of Cape Cod. I was on a strict schedule, so as soon as I got there, I had to turn right around and come back home. Leave it to me to NOT realize that I had embarked on a 320-mile round trip that was entirely pointless, but an amusing adventure.

I also got the Lowepro Slingshot 100 camera backpack for my birthday. Having two different camera cases, one for the camera, and one for the lenses, was a huge pain...and I couldn't have actually afforded this for myself so thankfully my birthday was right around the corner from when I got the Canon! I don't really know how I would ever get along without it, and I've thought that ever since I realized I can utilize it as almost a portable workspace. So here it is next to my new purse and some new orange shoes that cost $5 and some really cute socks that I got some months ago that just match this whole hot mess really well. lol.

The socks really don't make any sense (cloud & crossbones?) , but they're so cute!

Ugly new messenger bag!

I'll spare you the rest of the stuff for the next update, but I've been having a lot of fun with the Canon experimenting with night shots and the rest. :)

Anyway, over the past couple of days I've been hard at work listing new things on ebay and getting my artfire shop up to speed. Surprisingly, I had a sale on Etsy today...first time since Feb. 1! I still haven't really decided where I'm going to list the whole truckload of fabric I picked up at auction just about a month ago. I can't believe how fast time flew this month, especially after I got sick. Now my mom is sick too, but it's with something different. Hopefully it will pass soon, and we'll all be enjoying spring and not getting sick, and all that fun stuff.

Now...off to Google Analytics to see if I can actually learn anything. lol

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!

Another day at the beach!

Yesterday I went to breakfast at Olde Tymes in Norwich and afterwards decided that despite the 18 degree weather, I was going to head to the beach anyway. What fun! Charleston and Scarborough were both bust, though both were lovely and not as cold as I thought they would be. Of course, the last beach, as usual, did not disappoint. Too bad I didn't hit it at low tide, and had some fun running from waves while trying to dig in the sand.I know the color balance is off in the photo above, but I got this piece of China (lol) and a piece of porcelain (Charlestown, 1 of only 2 pieces I found).

Odd embossing on a lime green piece. Not sure what pattern this is.

I discovered this thick clear piece was embossed when I got home, but it's awesome nevertheless! Wish I could ID the bottle this came from :). It would have been read while lying on its side, which is odd because it was a round bottle and not your typical medicine bottle (rectangular shape). Other round embossed bottles would be read while the bottle was standing up.

Best find of the day, olive green rounded lip. Wasn't quite expecting this when I picked it up. Wish I found it earlier as the breaks are pretty new, but after the stormy weekend I'm not too surprised.

All finds! Loving the pink lizard and the bullet shell. There's some kind of writing on the bullet shell but I can't read it :(.

Sooooo...there you have it. The vintage plug was also found at the last beach and will be turned into some kind of steampunk wire-wrapped pendant. Stay tuned!

The media says the sky is falling but I look out my window and see a beautiful day!

Renita from VintageMomCreations suggested we all take a step back from OMGfinancialcrisisDOOMDOOMDOOM and say a little bit about ourselves. My blog lately has been a bit too Etsy oriented. So...if you're just starting to read now, who am I? I'm Megan, I run Mannequin Reject Emporium on Etsy, work for the United States Postal Service on the side (read: Saturdays and Mondays and some days in between).

I like to wear crazy socks, because I haven't owned a white pair of socks since 1999. I do that on purpose, because I think white socks are boring. My obsession with crazy footwear spread to shoes instead of black and white converses in 2006. And this is my latest pair of crazy shoes, which are wicked comfy.

I go to the beach in the winter to collect sea glass and dig bottles in the summer. I make jewelry, zines, all kinds of art but two of my bigger passions are writing (since 1996) and photography (since 2002).

This is what the economy looked like the second-to-last time I went to the beach.
And this is what it looked like on my way back from Canada earlier in September.
These are a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a Dodge Viper, a Saab, and a Porsche. The Jeep was mine so I parked next to these cars (all from Ontario) to feel special. Come to find out, the 3 owners of these cars were all friends on a roadtrip through New York state ...who knows where they were going. I thought it was funny that one of them drove a Saab, because I do too.

It's a bit older. But more special. HA.

It was nice to see windmills in NY! It's about darn time the US embraces alternative energies.

I also love to explore abandoned houses.
This house in particular is one of my favorites.

Problem is, it's somewhere in New York that I've only seen 3 times in my life, because I don't go to that part of NY all that often. I first spotted it in May 1998 and took these pictures with our family camera when I was 14 (made my mother pull the car over on I-90 so I could get it.)...but as you can see, the quality was terrible because the house was so far away. I last saw it in 1999 and wondered if it was still standing today.10 years later, it's STILL THERE! I think it's a shame it's gone to waste, but it's still beautiful.

So...that's a little about me. Yes, I think the economy is just as bad as everyone else does, but I do think we all suffer from the spin the media has put on it. I love to find beauty in everything and no financial crisis will make me think the sun won't come out tomorrow or that I'll wake up on the wrong side of the grass. This winter will be cold, no doubt, but we have a roof over our heads. Maybe we'll resort to a diet of Ramen Noodles and cut out meat because we may not be able to afford it. And I picked up two free badminton rackets and a birdie, which my mom and I had a blast with last night. We don't play right (net? who cares?) but we have a great time :).

Fossils, Trilobites, and Canada, oh my!

So we can all see why "Fossils Trilobites and Canada, oh my" would have been full of fail for the Wizard of Oz, but for me...well...read on!

Fly my pretties! Fly! Fly!!!!!

Who remembers my top-secret classified beads that I was working on back in February? I'll admit, I ran into an unforseen problem right after I painted the said beads, which resulted in a 6 month drying process. Here they are before they went in the oven, back before I ever bought my Saab (Feb. 26)

So like I said, they came out of the oven, I painted them, went to Boston and bought my Saab...came back...they weren't dry...came back a week later...they weren't dry...put them on a shelf...month later...still not dry...back on the shelf...

I went to Canada just after my 100th Etsy sale and spent a couple days at the beach on Lake Ontario. Naturally I started poking around for sea glass. On the second day, I got more than I bargained for.

First fossil found in the wild. I'm seriously contemplating naming it Nemo in 2525.

I did find quite a few more, but the best was this large rock with several different organisms and at least one clear fish (by my index finger) ...or at least something with a skull and a spine. I was so psyched, and still am!

When we came back home, this reminded me of my secret trilobite bead project from February...and wouldn't you know they're finally DRY?



The genuine trilobite was one I bought at a rock show in 1990. He's almost like a pet. The white one and gold one are twins, but I'm keeping the white one. The gold one is for sale!