End of Season Reflections

It has been a year, of sorts. Frankly, had anyone (in the past) told me that I would end up actually selling some of my seaglass to other collectors and to jewelry makers around the world, I would have looked at them like they were nuts. It surprises me a little, in a way, because I have been seeing jewelry made with seaglass for many years. I suppose I always figured that the jewelers got their own glass from personal trips to the beach.

Now that I think about it, that doesn't necessarily make sense-- some of them lived in locales 100s or even 1000s of miles from the nearest coastline. And, as one person at a street fair pointed out to me, earlier this year: "Making jewelry and going to fairs takes up all the time I have. I can't really afford to give up a bunch of days to go find my own glass, and then not be assured that I even get what I need, when I give up an entire day."

The thing I had "overlooked" is that a lot of artists live in financially precarious positions, and so the $100 they could save by doing their own beachcombing doesn't make up for losing three days of work. Apart from which being able to buy a batch of glass that has already been sorted by color, and selected for "jewelry quality" is a lot more reliable than depending on whatever turns up, on any given day at the beach.