How to make a sea glass mobile

This tutorial was originally created for my old blog Postcards from the Mothership, but I thought it was well suited for Curious Crone.

We have been collecting sea glass for a long time. Most of my collection was collected on the warm sandy shores of Prince Edward Island, but we’ve also collected from Nova Scotia, Vancouver, and even the shores of the Great Lakes.

Back in 2014, I created this tutorial on my blog Postcards from the Mothership. I’ve updated it for this site.

After collecting sea glass for several years and just storing it in pretty glass jars, one day it occurred to me to search for sea glass crafts on Pinterest and I was immediately smitten with the idea of a sea glass mobile. I didn’t want to start drilling the glass or playing with wire (although I’ve still got a LOT of sea glass so I’m not ruling that one out!) but I did love the idea of simply using string and glue. Easy peasy, right?

Of course, actually executing the plan turned out to be a lot more complicated than I’d anticipated. I set out to get some stretchy filament like you’d use in making a bracelet. The clerk in the bead store recommended against stretchy filament (more prone to breakage) and instead sold me a couple of meters of what seemed like very fine fishing line. I also picked up some E6000 adhesive. The idea was to tie a piece of glass, tap in a blob of E6000 to hold the knot, tie on the next piece, etc.

Ha. Not so much. The fishing line nearly drove me batty as I tried to tighten and knot the loops around the sea glass. I tried on two separate occasions to make it work, and got frustrated before I could get three or four pieces on the line. Finally, I reached out through Etsy to Rebecca Long, whose work had inspired me in the first place. She was nice enough to point me in the direction of a Martha Stewart video with a sea glass mobile tutorial that has since been taken down.

So here’s what I learned about making sea glass mobiles from Rebecca and Martha:

use braided fishing line. It’s way easier to knot, but also difficult to cut. I got mine at the Manotick Bait and Tackle shop – first time in four years of living around the corner I had the opportunity to visit their taxidermy-filled shop. o_O
use a glue with a built-in brush. I gave up on E6000 and a tooth pick in favour of Lepages with a brush and it made a world of difference. And miracle of miracles, I did not once glue my fingertips together.
lay out your pieces of sea glass ahead of time.
leave twice as much of a lead (for tying to the driftwood or other frame) as you think you will need, and then double it again.
take your line and make a simple loop over your fingers, pulling the end through the loop to start a knot. Slip your fingers out and the glass in, and make a knot tight against the top of the piece of sea glass, then fold the tail down alongside the thread. Brush from the knot to the bottom of the glass along the two threads with glue.
move on to the next line and repeat on all your threads, then go back and put the second piece on the first thread.

In the end, I bought three types of twine and two types of glue, and it took about four hours of futzing about before I finally started making progress. What you see here actually only took about 60 minutes, once I got a good rhythm going. I love how it turned out! That’s an authentic piece of PEI driftwood, by the way. I picked it up exactly with this purpose in mind.

I also found a better way to store the left-over sea glass. Did I mention I have a new addiction for vintage mason jars?