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Helen Nind
I was born a crafter. I love the creative process, problem solving and the practical side of using my hands to make things. Making jewelry has, more recently, become the most absorbing activity of the numerous crafting activities I have dabbled with. I feel very fortunate to be doing this as my day job right now. I have so much more to explore within this medium. When I began to experiment with marrying beach glass with silver or silver and other color metal elements I knew I had found something I wanted to pursue. I remember being so excited when I soldered silver for the first time and shaped sheet and wire into something interesting and beautiful. The possibilities seemed infinite. It was a bit more recently that it dawned on me, after taking a silver soldering course, that I could now use silver to mount sea-glass attractively to construct jewelry. As I have worked with the media of sea-glass and silver metal, which seem made for each other, I have found that the restrictions of using glass give enough of a framework not to be overwhelmed by the creative possibilities, but enough of a challenge in figuring out how best to showcase each piece. This appeals to my creative, problem solving gene. I first became addicted to picking up sea-glass many years ago. It's appeal for me is something to do with the miraculous transformation from ugly duckling to swan, facilitated by the buffeting action of the enigmatic beach environment over a long time period and additionally is appealing in being a waste material that is up-cycled into a useful product. I love the whole process of searching for the glass, deciding how to utilize it or other found things, forming the silver or other metal to capture or support them and selecting complimentary beads and additions to enhance with contrast and detail. The magic of finding a particularly beautifully colored and frosted piece of glass is one of the joys of life. I thank the beach for giving up such treasures especially for me, or so it seems. Very occasionally I find a piece so perfect that I can't bear to use it for a long while, or more often, when I find an especially good piece, I have to push any other project aside to work on it, as it has captured my inspiration. Each piece of glass speaks to me and when I create a piece of jewelry with it, I have a feeling of whether or not it is right. |
Beach-themed Jewelry
Minature Beach Cottages
