Hitting The Bottle

Recycling Fun

   I told you in the last blog update that I was spending Monday or Tuesday making recycled beads from wine bottle glass and that's just what I did. To say I enjoyed it is an understatement, I'm not sure if it was just the change of direction that made it such a pleasure or the fact I knew the bottles I was using would have been buried in some local dump by now.

   As you can see by the pictures the resulting beads turned out ok, I'm really pleased with them and to be honest I may have to put aside one day a week to make more. I think there is something special about using this forgotten waste glass for making beads, ok yes there is the fact it's recycling and by doing that we are doing our bit to help the planet but to me it's the idea of using what we would call rubbish, something we dump into bins every day and think nothing of it to make beads that can be worn in jewellery for possibly hundreds of years. I can't think of anything better than telling people the beads your wearing in that stunning piece of jewellery were made from pieces of broken bottles, the same bottles that lay in our city streets on Sunday mornings, the same bottles that are flung under hedgerows all around the countryside from car windows, yet now they site around some elegant wrist or neck looking a million dollars, I wouldn't mind betting they would also want some.    I know beadmakers have been using such glass for years and I too have made wine bottle beads many times over the past five or six years but until now I haven't really thought about it much, it was just something I wanted to try, I did it and that was that, it didn't mean anything to me. Now after spending a day or two working with the glass I'm starting to get a different feeling about it, it's starting to mean something, you know that feeling you get when you just know what your doing is right, well that's how I'm feeling and I guess one day I'll be able to explain it better.
   If your interested in seeing what I made go take a look in my etsy shop www.etsy.com/shop/pebbledreams I've listed some of the sets there. And if you have a special bottle that means something to you or you just love the colour then why not ask me if I can use it to make you some beads, rather than saving that cork from the bottle of bubbly wouldn't it be better to wear a piece of the bottle in bead form for years to come or to remember that special wedding why not use bottles from the celebrations to produce beads that can be made into jewellery for the bridesmaids. I will only charge for the time and you could end up with something very special to wear, you can contact me on robsbeadsofglass@aol.com  and I'll see what I can do for you.
   We have a fantastic wide blue sky here this morning, not a cloud in sight but it is a little chilly and I'm sure autumn is on it's way, the kids are getting ready to return to school after the holidays and it won't be long before we are all thinking of dark evenings and that warm log fire, where the hell as summer gone ?