Sea Glass Jewelry

Turn a smooth piece of sea glass and some wire into a simple and elegant necklace.

By Tammy Jones
Filed under: Jewelry Making, How To, Crafts

Turning prized beach finds into jewelry is an excellent way to show off your treasures. Beach glass is commonly made into very elegant pieces of jewelry — but often with a very elegant price attached. This necklace couldn't be simpler to make and takes only a few minutes.

Materials and Tools:

sea glass or other small beach treasure
small jewelry pliers, tweezers or old scissors
wire snips
20-gauge wire of your choice
smaller gauge wire (optional )
super glue or hot glue (optional)

Steps:

1. Determine how long you want your necklace to be and cut the wire to that length plus 1 inch for the hook. An average length is 16 or 18 inches.

2. Hold on end of the wire in tweezers, pliers or old scissors about 1/4 inch from the end and curl the wire around in a loop. Be sure to tuck the end in to the wire so it won't scrape your neck.

3. Curl in the other end in the same way, creating a slightly larger hook instead of a small closed loop this time.

4. Play around with string or scraps of wire to determine how you want to wrap your treasure into a pendant. Be sure to wrap at least three sides, if not four, to make a secure casing around it. I started with about 6 inches of wire and made a small loop in the middle, twisting several times to secure it. Then I placed the loop at one end of the glass and began wrapping the rest of the wire around it in a random manner. Then I fed the loop onto the hooked end of the necklace and slid it into place.