Sea Glass Wreath

In my last post I mentioned how much my mom loves sea glass. So I made her those two picture frames and I also made her this sea glass wreath. This wreath went through a lot of transformation to get where it is today. Want to see?

I started off by wrapping my straw wreath in this sheer blue ribbon. We had two rolls of it so I figured I had plenty...

Wrong! Somehow I ran out of it only this far through. I think they must have been previously used. What to do??

I had just a little bit left so I tried to just cover the area that would be most visible. I covered the rest of it with a thick black silky ribbon. To put it nicely, I hated it.

I later ripped off the black ribbon and covered it in sheer white. Still not 100% feeling it but I decided to go with it anyway.

Here is the sea glass I bought online. It was really jagged and hadn't been as naturally smooth as I thought it was going to be so, again, I was disappointed. But there was no going back as I'd purchased two pounds of it.

Here the wreath is covered (I just used my hot glue gun to attach the glass). I was liking the area covered in white but not the part covered in blue. I think it would have worked if the entire wreath was covered in the sheer white ribbon. I almost gave up at that point and was going to give it to my mom for Christmas even though I wasn't happy with it. I figured if she liked it, good, if she didn't, my feelings wouldn't be hurt. But it didn't make me proud to feel that way. I wanted to give her something I felt good about.

I made this in late November/early December. After shoving it in my closet for hiding for a few weeks, I knew I'd had enough. I pulled it out and RIPPED the sea glass off. Just thinking about it makes me go ouch. I ended up wearing some fluffy winter gloves but my fingers were still sore for days. I ended up using now ripped-up wreath for another project that I covered in yarn to hide the disaster and got another wreath frame to start fresh. I began hot gluing my pieces.

Here it is finished! My goodness, it's 500% better, isn't it? It looks so much cleaner and fresher! In reality, the white glass pieces aren't that clear but the flash washed it out. I love the blue colors! And thank goodness, my mom really liked it! I showed her the before picture and I think it was officially worth it to bruise my fingers.

Check out here to see where I'm linking up.

Mosaic Picture Frames

My mom loves sea glass, hands down. For the last few years for Christmas I've looked for something with sea glass. It tends to be pretty jewelry I find online but this year I decided to make something on my own.

I started off with these simple wooden picture frames I found at Michaels. I think they were $5-$6 each. Michaels always has some type of coupon for around 30-50% off one item so if you stagger your purchases, you can get them for cheap!

I purchased sea glass on ebay and positioned the glass in the design I wanted. The price of this really varies. I was surprised to find how expensive sea glass can shoot up to in the auctions! Especially since people can find it on the beach for free...I made two and probably spent $20-$30 on all my sea glass but I did make a total of three projects - these two frames plus something else I'll be sharing at the end of the week. Here is the design for the blue one after I pushed it off the frame.

I then spread mosaic tile glue around the frame in sections and placed my tile down. I think the instructions said I only needed to wait 20-30 minutes for the glue to dry before adding the grout but it had been raining so I waited a few days.

 Here are both frames grouted!

And here they are wiped clean with a sponge.

My mom really loved them and I added personal pictures to them. She said they were her favorite present! I kind of applaud myself for making them because we really don't have a lot of personal pictures around the house and now we have two framed family shots.

I used the sea green glass frame for a picture from our family trip to Hawaii in 2009 and the blue for our family trip to Alaska in 2010.