Sea glass is constantly washing up on our shores in various stages of opacity and smoothness. So what do you do with your sea glass? Pop it in a vase? Make jewellery? Maybe hang it like a crystal in a window to catch the light?
The smooth, well-rounded pieces, resembling pebbles are my favourite, the ultimate piece of sea glass that makes you smile when you find it! Evoking that feeling of tumbling in the sand and sea, it is thought that it can take up to 40 years to achieve smooth edges and complete opacity. They remind me of Jelly Tots! So what could I do with them?
I have recently started to add sea glass to paintings of Cornwall, fusing acrylic and bondaweb to fabric and embellishing with embroidery, sea glass and beads.
This is a really fun method of creating a piece of art. The bondaweb takes on a life of its own creating wrinkles where the paint is applied, you can actually hear it as it moves. Delicate details are not possible to achieve, they get lost in the crinkling. The outcome is never certain, so not for the controlled painter!
I apply embroidery to bring back the details. A lot of thought goes into the embroidery. I try to give some perspective and depth, using thicker darker strand in the foreground and more delicate shades and thinner strands for distance. The type of stitch can give rise to a thought "Ah! that's a leaf, maybe a tree!" Once embellished with the embroidery and sea glass, the piece becomes very tactile - a touch of Cornwall on your wall!
If you would like a 'Touch of Cornwall' on your wall, please feel free to visit our Etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/CornishWalkingTrails
Each piece can take several days from start to finish! I think the one pictured at the top of this blog took about 25 hours in total. Here's how I created St Michael's Mount ...
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