This past Sunday the lady who sits next to me in the church choir asked if I had any plans for the afternoon. Jay would be sleeping as he’d had to work the night before so I had planned on just catching up on some chores. It seemed that this lady had signed up for a beach glass jewelry-making class with her husband, but he was unable to make it because his brother was in town. It was being held at the winery that makes my favorite wine, so I said sure! I’m not much into making jewelry since I have my own in-house jewelry maker at my disposal (thanks Babe!), but I’m always up for learning something new. Plus, I would get a glass of wine!

I already own a piece of beach glass jewelry. This is a pendant that my mom made me from a piece of glass that I found on the beach. It’s the only piece I’ve ever found, and I didn’t think too much of it. When I brought it home my mom instantly saw it in a necklace. She’s really good with these kinds of things and I love what she did with this piece.

If you look you can tell that this was from a jar or bottle of some sort because there is the marking that all glass jars/bottles have. I think that it makes this piece really interesting.

I arrived at the winery, collected my glass of wine, and headed out to the tent where the jewelry-making would be taking place. I told Jay later that there weren’t any guys there at all so I’m glad that the woman’s husband couldn’t attend. He would have really felt out of place! Jay said that if he had found out that this guy had gone to the class he would have taken the guy’s Man Card right then and there. lol

We picked out three pieces of glass and settled down for our instructions. This wasn’t real beach glass. It was the kind of fancy glass that you can find in the floral area of craft stores. These are glass pieces that you can use to put in the bottom of vases and other things. Beach glass is hard to find so the woman who was teaching the class bought these so that we could practice on them. Essentially what she was teaching was the art of wire wrapping.

I followed the lady’s instructions, and this was my first piece. Something simple and probably nothing that I would ever wear. Mainly because it was silver and I can only wear gold. I was having fun and drinking wine, so it was all good! My friend told me that I was very good at the curly-q’s. She was having difficulty with it so I told her that if I could give her some of my curly-q’ing ability that I would. The ladies sitting across from us found that humorous.

The next lesson was how to add beads to a design. This woman had all kinds of beads that we could use. I honestly wasn’t too involved in the whole thing. I was just there to have a good time. Some women spent FOREVER picking out the right pieces of glass. Then they spent FOREVER searching through the beads to find just the right ones. What did I do? I figured we would be wire wrapping them so I chose three big pieces of glass… two blue and one white. When it was time to pick out the beads I took the one bin that nobody was looking through (the plastic pearls) and picked out a handful of blue and white. (Have you noticed the common theme?)  When it came time to wrap the wire and put the beads on I just did whatever first came into my head. Other women sat and pondered… then asked everybody around them if they liked a certain idea… then undid what they had just done… then had to ask the instructor if theirs was looking right. My friend would ask if she was wrapping hers correctly. I made sure that the glass was secured by the wire and then told her yes. She worried that she wasn’t doing it correctly and I had to keep reminding her that there wasn’t any one correct way to do it, that whatever looked good to her was the correct way.

The third lesson involved adding charms to the design. We were allowed to choose two charms. There were two different cats in there, so that’s what I picked. This just seemed to throw the other women into a bigger frenzy. What charm should they use? Was their pendant looking right? Should they add beads? I felt sorry for the instructor because she had to keep telling them that if it looked good to them, it was correct. Again, I just took my beads, charm and wire and tossed it onto the piece of glass. I wasn’t stressing out at all. To be fair, I was nursing my wine over the course of the two hour class and I was definitely feeling it. lol

After we were done with our practice pendants we were allowed to pick two pieces of real beach glass. This was glass that our instructor had found herself. She had a tray of glass that had been tumbled, and a tray that had just been cleaned up and not tumbled. For a change of pace I chose a green pieces of glass, but my other piece I chose was blue. I don’t have a picture of the blue piece because I hung it in Jay’s car and it has stayed there.

Anyway, I had one bead left and my second cat charm to use. Looking around I saw the gold wire on the table and decided to use that. I have no idea what I’m going to do with these, but they are pretty. I guess. We have a ton of nails that are just pounded into random spots on the walls (courtesy of the previous home owners) so maybe I will get some fishing line and randomly hang these around my house. Wouldn’t that make for some interesting wall décor??

It was an interesting class and I enjoyed myself, but I can’t say that it piqued my interest in jewelry making. I will leave that up to my mom. The best part? I came home with three bottles of good wine. Mmmm….  :-))))