Sea Glass Festival, Prince Edward Island
Sea Glass Festival 2013
One of the biggest and very popular sea glass festivals is called the Mermaid Tears Sea Glass Festival - and it is held every year in Canada on the fourth weekend in July. Now in its fifth year, the Mermaid Tears Festival is the only crafts festival of its kind in Canada.
One of the things that makes this festival so popular is that the local beaches are perfect good sea glass beaches, so you have the chance to attend AND to enjoy hunting for sea glass for yourself.
What could be better? A whole weekend of sea glassing and taking inspiration from sea glass artisans and vendor demonstrations.
Sea glass is very collecible and highly sought after. Few people in the world have easy access to a beach where they can collect sea glass themselves, relying on festivals such as the Sea Glass Festival at Prince Edward Island to provide them with their "fix" rather than the usual route of buying sea glass online on sites like eBay.
It's important to note that the sea glass at this Festival will be GENUINE sea glass, pieces actually collected from sea glass bearing beaches around the world. Faux sea glass, while attractive, really coesn't have the collectible value of the real thing.
When you do buy sea glass online, make sure it is genuine sea glass - and not just faux sea glass - if in doubt, simply ask the seller to confirm that it is the real thing. Genuine sellers of real sea glass will be delighted that you are interested enough to ask and check!
Mermaid Tears Sea Glass Festival Dates 2013
The Festival starts on the evening of Friday 26th July and runs through Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th July 2013.
Location: Souris, Eastern Prince Edward Island, Canada
Website: http://www.peiseaglassfestival.com
Hours: Friday 7pm to Sunday 5pm
2013 Programme
Friday 26th
Guest Speaker Lecture: The guest speaker si Richard LaMotte, who is the author of "Pure Sea Glass". 7pm onwards.
Saturday 27th
Sea Glass Crafts Fair with artisan vendors, demonstrations and entertainment. 10am - 5pm.
Sunday 28th
Sea Glass Crafts Fair with artisan vendors, demonstrations and entertainment. 12pm - 5pm.
Across the weekend, previous Sea Glass Festival highlights have included sea glass drilling demonstrations, sea glass hunts for children, a pipe and drum band, organised shore walks and local craftsmen demonstrations.
There's also an abundance of local foods to explore and enjoy!
Richard LaMotte's Book:
More on Sea Glass
- Is Sea Glass a Gem?
Although some sea glass can be used in the same way as a gem, sea glass is not a gem. Discover how sea glass is used in jewellery and crafts to bring a unique look... - Seaglass
Whether you call it sea glass, or beach glass, it's all the same thing. The name you use will be based on which name you first heard. Collecting sea glass has been a great past-time for generations...
Apart from a small handful of beaches worldwide, you can never totally predict whether a beach will be a good sea glass beach or not. However, some beaches you will usually, or often, find sea glass - and other beaches you will never find sea glass on them!
What you need to do is to visit beaches that are most likely to produce sea glass and then start to devise your own methodology for finding the best parts of any given beach
Often, finding sea glass on a beach (once you are on the right beach) isn't difficult - what IS difficult for most people is getting the right sort of sea glass. Sea glass can be:
- Too small for wire wrapping - although there are other methods to use this in your jewelry
- Not ready - where the sea glass hasn't been weathered for enough years to be smoothed off
- Damaged - where the sea glass is weathered enough, but has beenn damaged in the process by a large stone knocking a corner off it.
- Not the color you wanted - different areas yield different colors of sea glass and in some areas you might never find one of the rare colors.
However, in the main, you can find a use for nearly all the sea glass you pick up.
The good quality/good sized pieces can be used to make pendants. The lesser quality large pieces can be used in sea glass wind chimes, or general craft projects.
There's nothing you can do about the colors you collect, you are stuck with what is available, so that's just something you'll have to live with.
If the pieces are too small for what you had intended to use them for, they can still be incorporated into general crafts and you can make items such as coasters. Even if all you can find are "Sea Glass Tinites", which are minute pieces, you can still display them in miniature cork-topped bottles.
Map of Sea Glass Festivals
Sea Glass Festivals Around the World
Prince Edward Island, Canada, isn't the only place where you can enjoy, see and buy sea glass. There are other venues and new festivals being launched every year. Why not check out something a little closer to your home, e.g.:
- 2013 Peblsfloat Sea Glass Festival, Hartlepool, England, United Kingdom.
- Great Lakes Beach Glass Festival, Erie, Pennsylvania
- Mid-Atlantic Sea Glass & Coastal Arts Festival, Lewes, Delaware
- Ashtabula Harbor Beach Glass Festival, Ashtabula, Ohio
- International Beachcombing Conference, Lewes, Delaware
- NASGA Sea Glass Festival, Virginia Beach, Virginia
- Santa Cruz Sea Glass & Ocean Art Festival, Santa Cruz, California
- Cayucos Sea Glass Festival, Cayucos, California
Why not see if there are events closer to your home.
Images:
Blue Cobalt Sea Glass Bottle : Swampyank at English Wikipedia [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via W
