Little Sea Creature

The newest addition to our Little Sea Creature necklaces, our aqua jellyfish. The sea glass used in the piece is quite thick and you can see little bubbles in the glass, which usually means that the piece is very old, before glass was mass produced. One of my favourite things about making jewelry with sea glass is resusing what was once discarded material, and giving it new life. He'll be joining the rest of his family in our etsy shop and after that, who knows where he'll be off to? A well traveled jellyfish. Anyone have a wonderful idea for another sea creature to tackle?

ROAD TRIP WINNERS!

Congrats to the Trans Canada Etsy Team Road Trip contest winners! Etsy user Nepp145 won the gorgeous prize pack and HipEHoops won the rug. We had lots of entries and lots of fun, thank you to everyone who participated.

TRANS CANADA ROAD TRIP EVENT!

Our wonderful Trans Canada Etsy Team is having a virtual road trip and we are giving away two amazing prizes! The promotion runs from June 20th to July 1st.

During this time, when you make a purchase from a participating shop, you automatically earn one ticket into a prize draw for every $10 you spend (before shipping is added to the total). So if you spend $10, you will get one ticket. If you spend $50, you get 5 tickets.

If you mention the promotional code "Road Trip" in the notes to seller when you check out, you can earn one additional ticket into the prize draw.

There are two incredible prizes!

A $350 Prize Pack consisting of all these handmade items:


And a $175 Handwoven Rag Rug:


The rag rug was woven by Pegg, FiveForty, using tshirts that were sent to her from all the participating team members across Canada. It is a wonderful collaboration bringing together our members from coast to coast, and beautifully executed by Fiveforty through her artistry and skill.

So here is how you win! From June 20th to July 1st, any purchase you make from the participating shops will get your name into the draw. You get one ballot for every $10 that you spend. On July 2nd, we will draw for the winners. Remember, if you mention the promo code "Road Trip" when you make your purchase, you will get one extra ballot!



Here is a list of participating shops and prizes that each shop has donated to the prize pack. Remember, you earn 1 ticket for each $10 you spend (prior to shipping costs) in these shops:


Enthral
(prize pack contribution: three pairs of earrings and a set of hair elastics, retail value $22)

Five Forty
(prize pack contribution: a suncatcher, retail value $42)

MyHandboundBooks
(prize pack contribution: leather journal, retail value $39)

i Heart That Dance
(prize pack contribution: handmade bag, retail value $35)

Laura Bucci
(prize pack contribution: cup cozy, retail value $12)

rjcharms
(prize pack contribution: earrings and a bookmark, retail value $17)

Rikrak
(prize pack contribution: bib, retail value $21)

Off the Hooks
(prize pack contribution: crocheted hat, retail value $20)

Too Aquarius
(prize pack contribution: two necklaces, retail value $20)

Pixel8ed
(prize pack contribution: recipe book, retail value $10)

Tangente
(prize pack contribution: a catnip mouse, retail value $8)

Inkyspider
(prize pack contribution: brooch, retail value $9)

Kootsac
(prize pack contribution: set of reusable produce bags, retail value $10.50)

Prairie Peasant
(prize pack contribution: journal, retail value $20)

Carvel Country soaps
(prize pack contribution: $20 gift certificate)

Bovine Bubbles
(prize pack contribution: $20 gift certificate)

Sea Glass Designs
(prize pack contribution: necklace)

Piggy Tails
(prize pack contribution: stationary)

String Me Along
(prize pack contribution: set of hair pins, retail value $27)

Paisley Baby
(prize pack contribution: wet bag, retail value $13)

We hope you have fun participating in our virtual road trip, Happy Canada Day!



*It is also possible to get one entry without making a purchase by writing a short essay describing your favorite Canadian thing (place, person, food, book, band, artist etc) Tell us why you love it and what it means to you. Then, send in your entry by contacting Sara through her Etsy shop.

BOTANICALS

June is one of my favourite months- our gardens, without a sign of life just a month or two ago, are green and lush, with spring flowers spilling over the grass and drinking up the rain. To celebrate, we've chosen some of our favourite pieces of sea pottery with botanical prints and adorned them with whimsical, tendril-like sterling silver bails, just in time for summer. Our botanical pieces are newly listed in our etsy shop

LOULOU Feature!

We're very excited to have one of our necklaces in LOULOU magazine's June issue! LOULOU is Canada's shopping magazine. Look for us on page 40, Eco-Buzz, featuring earth friendly products (you may have to look hard, because its a tiny picture, but exciting nonetheless!).

Handmade Wedding Bands

This custom wedding band is one of a pair made for a great Nova Scotian couple who will be married in July. They designed the rings themselves, preferring simple sterling silver bands with the curved design to represent their love for the ocean, as well as each other. See the ring come to life below.


1. The sterling sheet (0.8 mm thick) was measured to ensure the right ring size, and cut with a saw. A’s ring size is 7, so the silver needed to be 56.5 mm in length.






2. The silver strip was stamped with the couples' initials. These are new stamps, a finer font than my other ones, just got them from Rio Grande.






3. The small hole was drilled in the band to allow the saw blade to be inserted. A curved line was cut freehand down the length of the band, taking care to stop before the stamped initials.





4. To prepare for soldering, the edges of the band were sanded so that they met flush, tightly enough so that you don’t see light through the joint.





5. The band was fluxed, to clean the joint and to prevent firescale from forming on the silver. I solder with a Smith’s Little Torch, using propane and oxygen. To solder a joint like this, you want a bushy flame with a soft hiss, blue with a bit of orange. After soldering, the ring was pickled in an acid solution to clean it.




6. To make it perfectly round, the band was then put on the ring mandrel, and hammered with a rawhide mallet. Now it looks more like a ring.





7. The ring was then sanded with increasingly finer grades of sandpaper (from 180 to 600) to remove scratches. To give it a mirror shine, it was then polished with silicone discs. To finish it off, the ring was tumbled with stainless steel shot for fourty five minutes.


And there you have it, a sterling ring to last a lifetime.

Home Sweet (you know the rest...)

Its always exciting to find pieces of sea pottery with images, and houses and castles are my very favourite. And bittersweet, because we're trying to sell our home right now, which isn't my favourite thing to do. It probably doesn't help that what would be a dining room (if we were civilized folk) is my studio, crammed with our sea glass finds and floating in silver dust. This piece of sea pottery is bezeled in fine silver and hangs on an 18" sterling silver snake chain. If you'd like to see more pics of this, visit the listing in our etsy shop (and buy my house please).