Saturday, April 18, 2009

Going Treasure hunting for Sea Glass along the California Coast

My wife and I are planning on going down the coast to the Ft. Bragg area soon, to explore the beaches there. I hear there's one beach that contains a lot of sea glass. Where does sea glass come from? Brace yourself...trash. Many years of broken bottles and other glass objects that were tossed into the sea, and smoothed over by the friction of the waves and rocks. The sea offers up these specimens when the tides are right.

 We went to a beach in Kauai last April that had sea glass, but the surroundings were industrial and depressing, so we didn't stay long searching for good specimens.

We were watching a Discovery Channel segment that showed people who used sea glass in their art. They went to special little coves along the San Francisco coast that were only accessible during certain times of the day, to get great pieces of sea glass. The people had to run out, scoop up what they could, and run back before a wave smacked into them!

One of the places was only accessible by kayak. For many years art glass scraps had been thrown into the ocean by an art colony there and the resulting pieces of sea glass are really beautiful...and expensive. Yes, certain pieces of sea glass can be worth a lot of money!

We discovered the most desirable colors were orange and red, both rare, and thus expensive. The prettier pieces are made into jewelry that can sell for astronomic prices. Maybe we'll find a gem in the rough next weekend!

Sand grains from around the world are mixed together like a pouch full of gems in this photo. The sand grains are from Maui, Hawaii, Japan, California, Ireland, Bermuda, and Minnesota.

Where would a person find a such a close-up of sand grains? Step right up and go to www.sandgrains.com to see some beautiful examples of other sands, and artwork by Gary Greenberg who explores images through a microscope.

4 comments:

Kym said...

I love sea glass, too. My favorite is pale green--it feels and looks as if a piece of the ocean broke off so that I could carry it home.

Linda J said...

If you love sea glass you may be interested in a private online member community dedicated to Sea Glass Lovers around the world.

Members share tons of photos, craft and display ideas, beach locations, events and much more!

http://www.seaglasslovers.ning.com

ENJOY!

ImBlogCrazy said...

Thanks for the great link Linda!

Unknown said...

Cool. Figured I would post a cool piece of jewelry made from sea glass if anyone wanted to check it out.

http://tinyurl.com/ccvu9y

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