YazBerry Jewelry Collection: Ocean Artifacts

The Ocean Artifacts Collection where beach combing is my muse...Addicted to treasure hunting on any beach I can get to. I always leave with pockets full of treasures...I have a rock problem, beach glass, metal bits, bones, driftwood...addicted.

In my personal collection I have many interesting glass bottles, distinct pieces of pottery and glass in interesting hues. I also have perfectly round stones, an ancient tobacco pipe stem, strange metal pieces... In my jewelry collection I often wire wrap sea glass in a simple and fresh spiral motif. I pair pottery chards with semi-precious stones. I mix glass with chain and many other materials.

You can find my ocean artifacts on my Etsy shop and on my facebook page. Most pictured are still available, some have found great homes however. Inspired by something you see? Have a favorite color of glass you would like made into jewelry? Contact me and I can discuss a custom piece with you.

YazBerry Jewelry Now Sold at Susie's Seaside Crafts & Oddities, Birchy Cove, NL

A lovely selection of YazBerry's sea glass and beaded jewelry is now available at Susie's Seaside Crafts & Oddities, Birchy Cove, NL (10 mins outside of Bonavista, NL). Watch for signs to Susie's Cafe, the craft store is adjacent to the cafe (eat there while you are out that way...good feed!). If you are looking for a variety of crafts made in Newfoundland, Susie's has everything from paintings to hand hooked rugs by the owner and other talented hookers, whimsical mummer dolls and a variety of knit hats & mittens as well as many other great items. Owner Shirley also stocks handmade frames for rug hooking and handmade hooks. In the fall she teaches rug hooking classes.

YazBerry Donates Purse & Jewelry to Laura Baker School Auction

Recently I was invited to donate some of my creations to the Laura Baker School Gala Auction. I am honored to have received the invitation and wanted to share with you the goodies up for Auction. I even made a custom box out of a recycled record album jacket. My apologies for the poor photo quality, my cell phone camera is...fuzzy at best - I forgot to photograph this at home so in the car it was just before delivery.

Up for auction at the gala is a sage clutch made from recycled upholstery samples, lined with vintage polyester yardage in carrot orange. It features a snap closure and small, silk lined zipper pocket inside. To compliment this purse I have included a matching jewelry ensemble featuring earrings with mossy coral nuggets and glossy coral nuggets in warm oranges and salmons and a coordinating sea glass pendant in a soft sea foam green.

HandmadeMN Giveaway - Sea Glass Necklace & Earrings Set

Now is your chance to win some of my handmade sea glass jewelry. HandmadeMN, a collective of MN based artist's and crafters I am a member, is hosting a giveaway of a necklace & earring set made from handpicked Salem, MA sea glass.

Enter now through May 21! www.handmademn.com
Choker Necklace and Earring Set - Emerald sea glass and beach pottery hand picked by Virgina on the beaches surrounding Salem, MA. Wire wrapped in her signature spiral style with silver plated wire. Recycled silver beads as spacers and sterling silver ear wires. One of a kind transferware beach pottery shard.

Ocean Artifacts

This pendant is available here.Let me start by saying that my mother would have kicked me out of the house as a child if I had grown up near the ocean artifact laden beaches of Salem. It's bad enough I had a rock problem (it got so bad they would periodically end up back in the yard...and I'd repick them ;) ). Salem has a rich history; of using it's beaches as the city dump. I hope and assume this is no longer the case, however am grateful that at one point, it was.

It started with beach stones this summer on Marblehead beach. Their ocean polished roundness, speckled patterns, solid black matte stones and quartz drew me in. Steve and I couldn't go to the beach without me taking home at least a couple fistfuls of rocks. I have a rock problem. I admit it. And since this summer was ghastly hot and we have no air conditioning...you can imagine how many times we went to the beach.

Then, in the middle of the summer one day on Artists' Row in Salem, I met Nancy, a beach comber extraordinaire. She brought in a tote filled with glass shards, pottery bits, corroded metal doohickeys and more one afternoon. We dumped it out on the sidewalk and I was hooked. I real live archeological dig (don't remind my mother of my digs in the ravines in our neighborhood growing up. Used as dumps at some point, I unearthed all sorts of curiosities).

Nancy laughed at me because I moved so slow assessing each item trying to determine what it was, how old it might be, how it got to be in the state it was currently found and washed up on the shores of Salem. She kindly let me take a small bag of treasures...which I promptly sorted by color/material and started making into jewelry. This Y necklace is available here.

Then I showed Steve...and we were both hooked. Here are some pictures of one of our beach combing excursions. On this one we unearthed all sorts of oddities. MANY whole bottles, bits of leather (towns surrounding Salem once were home to tanneries), chemistry remnants, melted glass and more. In the early 1900's Salem suffered a large scale fire and dumped the remains of it in the area we were combing.




AND The weirdest find of the day: