I'm back with a new little sidekick and a new line of jewelry!

Hello again! Remember how I kept mentioning how pregnant I was?  

Here's my little sidekick! (And his daddy!)

 

This is Little Roger.

He's growing WICKED fast.

Little Roger is almost 4 months old already, and it took just about that long for me to get used to juggling the needs of a very new and loveable baby and just about everything else.  I let my Etsy shop coast for quite a while since I had built it up so much over the summer but all I had energy/time to do was ship orders out as they came in.

While out and about just before Christmas, hanging out with my mother-in-law just so I could get the heck out of the house, this new jewelry line hatched.  She was looking for an inspirational bracelet for her pastor and couldn't find anything she liked.

Suddenly, something clicked.

So I went home and made this.

There's a similar one listed in my Etsy shop.

Boho Wrap Bracelet - Inspirational Jewelry, Trust, Faith, Hope, Believe in Denim Blue with Sodalite, Lapis, Labradorite, Czech Glass Beads

Ever since I started making jewelry for my flea market booth and Etsy shop in 2007-8, I've struggled with finding a voice.  I love love LOVE Czech glass beads and I LOVE semi-precious stones and I have a ton of both but there's only so many pairs of earrings I can make and hardly any of my stone jewelry/nature line ever sold...EVER.  All of the sudden, all of these materials came together in Boho Wrap Bracelets, which I can't seem to stop making and I'm finally using all these beads that I bought a ton of, way back when.  That night, I made a bracelet for my mother in law for Christmas, and I made a bracelet for my own mother to match the necklace I made her for her 50th birthday in 2009.

I made wrap bracelets until I ran out of wire, and then I bought some more and kept right on going.

#309 Boho Wrap Bracelet - Deep Ruby Red with Garnets, Labradorite, Antique Buttons, Smokey Quartz, Freshwater Pearls, Czech Glass Beads & Charms

#319 Boho Wrap Bracelet - Pink and Green Czech Glass Beads with Malachite, Aventurine, Chrysoprase, Dyed Agate, and Charms

And then...I made a huge one...for ME. Because I wanted to make an attention grabber that I could use to advertise my shop.  I have made a few pieces for myself over the years and handed out business cards when people ask.  I've heard whispers of "hey, she's wearing clock hands for earrings" while out at Ocean State Job Lot. 

So here is the most awesome piece of jewelry I've ever made, which I call "The Button Box (#326)."  I've been hoarding glass buttons ever since I started selling buttons on Etsy, and started putting them in my jewelry during the past year.  There are some buttons I would admit that I would miss if I sent them off to new homes, so I used many of them in this bracelet, and I used the best of the beads I own, as well as semiprecious stones.

The Button Box - Vintage and Czech buttons with Czech beads and Labradorite, Fluorite, Garnets, Carnelian, Aventurine, Chrysoprase, Peridot, Malachite, Turquoise, Amazonite, Lapis, and Amethyst.

Of course, I'm open to making another one, but they're extremely limited as I don't have many yellow or orange buttons.  If there's a high demand, I'll source more, but a lot of these buttons came from lots I got at yardsales so the colors were up to chance.  (I used to buy small buttons from EKSupplies on Etsy, but she doesn't seem to have any left to sell.  Still, she's a fab seller!)

So that's bringing you up to date.  I also started a new little website, Adventures with Meg, since I used to post some adventures in here and that site also has Saab shots. 

I hope to be able to post new blog posts once a week, but that might be a bit too ambitious.  We'll see. :)

A necklace for Buggy kitty.

Last Sunday, I spent all day making jewelry at my inlaw's while Brent worked on the race car with his brother and his dad.  I seriously hauled like 6 bead trays and probably 50 pounds of beads and wire and clock hands and you name it over there.  I ransacked my entire studio rather than just...staying home.

I've been having a bit of a creative streak lately and have been making a lot of jewelry to deal with some bad news we received about three weeks ago.  I've made some of the most beautiful jewelry yet during the past three weeks and last Sunday was no exception.  I'm kind of baffled by this because sometimes I don't exactly make pretty things.

Anyway, one piece I made took several hours because I couldn't get it to work right with the ideas I had for it, so here it is in the later stages of being made.

Anyway, at my inlaws, there was a cat named Buggy. 

Buggy was such a sweet cat and she was Brent's buddy for 14 years.

Buggy disappeared Sunday night after we departed my inlaw's for home.  We found out she was missing on Monday afternoon after dealing with some other stuff that had to do with the bad news I mentioned earlier.  We spent hours looking for her on Tuesday, but she vanished.  We checked surveillance cameras until we couldn't bear to watch anymore, and it didn't get us any closer to finding out what happened to her.

As for the necklace, I realized it was the last thing I made while she was still alive.  I last saw her when we were leaving for home that night.  At one point I dropped a bunch of the seed beads and accidentally picked up some cat food crumbs thinking it was the beads (haha).  Every time I looked at the necklace, I thought of Buggy, and if it were to sell in my Etsy shop, I would be sad to see it go.

So I added a little cat bead to remind us of our tabby Buggy, and turned it into a little memorial to her.  I can make more necklaces similar to this one, but this one is special.  I wore it out to a bunch of yardsales yesterday and got a lot of compliments.

 It's been a week and Buggy hasn't come home.  We live in rural eastern Connecticut, we're not delusional about what could have happened to her and we've taken it really hard.  When we get cats of our own, they're not going out after dark.

 Brent and Buggy, the first time I ever met little Buggy at dinner at his parents back in 2012.

 As for the other bad news, if anything comes of it, then it will show up in the blog.  Otherwise, here's some of the jewelry I made while dealing with that.

I haven't made a pair of earrings like these since 2008, and we'll see how they do!

 I love uranium/vaseline glass beads, as well as electric blue!  This will be listed soon.

 

Fossil Necklace #264

This was made from a couple upcycled pieces of jewelry I've had laying around for years, and I love how it came out!

Otherwise, not much else has been going on.  Obviously I'm moving a bit slower these days since I'm 38 weeks pregnant and fully expect this kid to barely make it into October before birth.  I had my strongest contractions yet after we were looking for Buggy on Tuesday because I over did it while hiking through the woods.  

Making jewelry in massive amounts is not nesting, right?  Or is that an Etsy thing...

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!

Sea glass obsession!

Hey, if you love sea glass as much as I do, I know I'm forgiven already for the length of this post and the amount of pictures. LOL. All of the pictures in this post were shot with my brand new Canon Rebel XS, and I've been experimenting as well so now all of you are my guinea pigs! mwahahaha!

Anyway, it's been snowing and I've been working too much to head to the beach at all this year, which makes me a sad pumpkin. Tide times have been working against me too, so seeing it's been over 3 weeks since I've gone actually makes me rather miserable. And I've been sick to boot. LOL

Anyway, last trip's finds! Not much of note until I found another marble at the same beach I found two others! This one was partially buried in the sand, so it made the day. :) Also found my first piece of vibrant lavender.

I like this marble.

Right after this trip, I was poking around the bottle forum at antique-bottles.net and then there was this topic about someone selling a sea glass marble on ebay for $66 recently. So...I posted a picture of one of my marbles that I had handy. It got me thinking...now that almost a year has passed since I started collecting sea glass, maybe I should do a "best finds so far" type entry. I also wanted to re-shoot some of my better pieces since my Kodak had some problems with detail sometimes.
Some of my bottle necks and other special pieces that I keep separate (otherwise I keep them in clear jars by color).

Sea pottery, milk glass, and my lone piece of opaque black glass.
As it turns out, last night I discovered that the two patterned pieces are from the Greenwood China company in Trenton, NJ (the back of the larger piece is marked Greenwood / Trent). They are from the same pattern but two different sized plates! A whole plate in this pattern is currently for sale here. The best part was that these two patterned pieces were found well over 6 months apart at the same beach, but they didn't quite match up until I found the picture of that plate. Greenwood China was only in business from around 1862 or 1868 until 1933, and the particular stamp used on these plates was first implemented in 1886. These plates were more than likely manufatured for a hotel. A part of me wonders if they came from the Narragansett Casino (built in 1886, destroyed by fire in 1900) or the Rockingham Hotel (where the fire started which burned the Narragansett Casino.) If you know of the Narragansett Towers, they were originally part of the Narragansett Casino. (More information can be found on this site!)


My two favorite bottle neck pieces, found at the same beach!

Anyone who can identify some of these patterns or embossing, feel free!

This piece (above) isn't so worn (found in the driveway of a house at Pleasure Beach along with other bits of sea glass (I'm guessing that the person who lived at the house collected sea glass and kept it in a jar, which was smashed in the driveway because we found significant amounts of sea glass in that location.)

My best pieces, cobalt blues (lousy quality wear/frosting on the cobalts for the most part...) vaseline/uranium glass, and my marbles. :)

My red piece shaped like the lower 48 of the good ol' USA :D. Maybe after global warming though...because naturally Cape Cod and Florida are missing. lol

And the marbles too.

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!