Sea Glass Beads, Glass Jewelry Beads

Buy Sea and Beach Glass Beads?

Or make them yourself?

1. How to Make Glass Beads with Beach Glass

That said, the making of beads out of sea glass can be a challenge to get the right pressure so you don't break them while drilling.

You'll need to have the proper diamond drill bits and a jewelry drill such as a Dremel or similar drill.

Step-by-Step: Drill a Hole in Glass

2. To prevent skipping, hold bit at an angle and create a groove.

3. Once you have a groove started, drill straight down using light pressure until the hole is complete.

4. To avoid undue chipping, drill half way from one side of the sea glass, then turn it over and finish drilling from the other side.

( Click here and scroll down for photos of how to do this.)

Tips:

Start with larger pieces of sea glass. The smaller the beads, the harder to drill. Also, there is an approximate 5-10% breakage rate when drilling sea glass.

As you become more adept at drilling, move on to smaller pieces. Expect breakage and don't practice on your rare pieces!

Use your craft quality pieces to practice on as opposed to your good jewelry quality pieces.

2. Purchasing Sea or Beach Glass Jewelry Beads

• First, beads that are advertised on the internet as real sea glass are not actually real sea glass in most cases (see the quotes from misleading sales hype). 


• If you're happy with imitation sea glass beads that's fine but don't be misled into thinking you're getting the real thing.

3. Identifying Genuine Sea Glass Jewelry Beads

• First, there are "trade beads" that were used to trade with indigenous people for furs, etc, as well as glass beads originally from ornaments, lamps, chandeliers, et cetera.

Read how Lin found it!

These ended up in the surfline of the ocean and became tumbled and worn like all true sea glass and then were found by a collector on a beach.

They're extremely rare, and it would be highly unlikely to find them for sale anywhere because collectors have a tendency to hold onto these prized possessions.

• Second, there are true pieces of genuine sea glass that have been drilled and become irregularly shaped sea glass "beads."

They're easily recognizable by the following features:

• No two "beads" would be alike in shape or size.


• Rarely if ever would the bead be perfectly round or oval. 


• The beads would never be shiny; rather, they would have the true sea glass tumbled look to them. (See the page on sea glass quality.)


• If a bead is a rare color, it would be highly unlikely to be matched to another similar bead in shape.

4. Avoiding Error When Purchasing Sea Glass Beads

Note: None of the following sellers were selling genuine sea genuine sea glass:

• "Frosted Beach Glass Beads - Chunky Colors of the Sea - This auction is offering three strands of chunky frosted beach glass beads..." This seller does add "All beads are in excellent, unused condition." Unused sea glass??? 


• "Bead frosted sea glass twisted bugle glass" "Unusual sheer frost glass with a slight twist fine jewelry gems"

• "100 Exquisite Black Sea Glass Rondelle Beads" The description page did not mention anything about sea glass.   


• "SEA GLASS -GREEN AGATE NECKLACE" - "...The Buy-It-Now price is for One Strand of these Beautiful Frosted Sea Beach Glass Beads."


• "sea glass white frost glass seed spacer bead..." - "Barely there ab coating on frosted sea glass beads"


• "Chinese Sea Glass Beads" - "We have an extensive collection of Chinese Sea Glass Beads." This advertiser did add somewhere in the description: ""Chinese Sea glass is a tumbled glass made in China that is reminiscent of real sea glass..."


• A prominent bead shop on Google - "Sea Glass Round Bead Strand, White..." This site offered a variety of "sea glass" beads and necklaces without any indication that these were fake sea glass beads.

So the gist of it all is that since there is no regulation of the terms used, it's "Buyer Beware!"

Would you like to see more sea glass crafts ideas?