Reluctantly, Creative side tapped !!

Yesterday was a fun one. I finally had the liberty of catching up on some sleep (originally lost due to Mother Nature's recent middle of the night rants). Then went into the Boutique for a private lesson scheduled with a good customer.

The designated class was originally intended for students to learn how to decoratively wire wrap larger beads to make them into pendants. Turns out, she wanted to learn how to take pieces of purchased sea glass & turn them into pendants - oh yeah, and some scalloped sea shells she brought home from Florida over the years.
If you do any kind of wire work, you know that wrapping a bead (with a hole) is much different than wrapping something that does not have a hole of any kind.
Insert *sigh* here.
After lounging all day, it was just something I wasn't mentally prepared for.
However, as a business owner, you always want to make your customers happy. So I winged it.
The answer to the question is yes, "Do you know how to wire wrap items without holes?"
I just wasn't prepared to not be prepared.

So after two hours, I had successfully taught her how to bind wire together and wrap supports around the pieces she brought with her. As a "purist" I don't use glue, however, she had brought with her several sample pieces that she had purchased over the years and all of them featured layers of store bought sea glass glued together, then wire wrapped around them to make it appear as if the wire was holding them together.
She learned how to do this without glue & even learned how to turn those shells into pendants too !

At the end of the class, I had used a few pieces of her sea glass & one of her shells to demonstrate the techniques. I had put them both back in her pile so she could wear them... We carry a variety of cabs, but not loose sea glass or shells without holes.
She had brought me a little gift too - a hand painted sea shell that says, "Life is better at the beach."
After she left & I went back to the classroom table to clean up, I found she had left a small sampling of sea glass & two small scalloped shells on the worktable. We had discussed how much fun it was & I had commented that I'd have to get out to get some sea glass myself!
So she left me a bunch to get myself started.
What a sweet gesture !

That being said, I can't tell you the possibilities that were running through my head.
Glass in hand must have sparked the ideas and before I could even get to my new virtual notebook to jot them down.

We have a huge kiln! It was originally purchased to do some medium scale slumping & fusing.
Of which, we still intend to get to... (its only been a year)
But OH - the possibilities of working smaller scale for glass sheet into wire wrapped jewelry pendants!
YIKES!

And then....we've been collecting glass bottles for about a year (see a trend here?).
It would be so cool to break some of them into shards, firepolish some of them & use those for said jewelry pendants.

OK - so noted.
To be placed on the "I hope to get to it someday" list.


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