Shell Wax

 

Last Fall when I went to Chincoteague, VA to stitch with friends, Jim came and joined me for part of the weekend.

We had never been to Assateague Island so one morning we woke before dawn and headed East to the beach for sunrise...

The sun held promise for a new day and for warming the salt spray chill that blanketed the beach on that crisp November morning.

Except for a flock of terns and gulls...

We were quite alone.

So Jim fell into his tide line ritual of walking the wrack line...a beach intent Sherlock Holmes looking for clues in the interstices between sand and sea...

What he found that day amid the shells of oyster, atlantic clam and cockles...

Was a predominance of black scallop shells.

"Let's take some home", I said, inspired by our good fortune and taking their plentitude as a sign that I should use them in some special way.   I had been wanting to make a gift for my stitching friends that gather in Chincoteague, to honor our friendship and the special time we share together every year and these scallops were just the inspiration I needed.

So we collected 20 or so of the black scallop shells and took them home where they sat in a jar for almost a year until it was time once to return to Chincoteague this past week...

I took two of the largest and deepest shells...

And pressed them into a silicone putty that I'd found at a craft store in order to make a mold.

To prepare the putty, you have to mix a 1:1 ratio of Component A and Component B together.  It has a limited working time and you can see in the mold on the left below that the compound had already started to set before I pressed in the shell.  I was quicker mixing and pressing the second time around, and used the impression on the right as my final mold.

I found a candle making supplier for microcrystalline wax online and melted the pellets on low heat in a $2 saucepan I'd found at the thrift store [Note: area must be well-ventilated]...

In searching for microcrystalline wax, there are two types available, a soft, tacky version and a hard version.  I bought the hard version.

I had taken beading classes from Diane Dennis and from Laura McCabe over the Summer and both artists used microcrystalline wax exclusively to condition their fireline beading threads.  Laura McCabe spoke very highly of the archival properties of microcrystalline wax, mentioning that she had used it previously in conservation work.

In the past, I have used beeswax to condition threads for bead embroidery and for goldwork but I liked the microcrystalline wax a bit better.  It was less tacky resulting in a smoother thread than beeswax so I thought it might be nice to share my newfound favorite with my stitching friends.

I poured my melted wax into my little silicone mold...

Twenty times...

Et voilá!



A wax shell thread conditioner to place in their stitching workboxes.

A gift from the sea and from me.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Dip-Dye Fourth of July

Fourth of a July is a big holiday for our family as it's the one time a year that we are all on vacation at the same time. 

As the kids get older, their jobs and schedules are making this harder and harder to achieve and the time we're having all together is shrinking to a weekend or even just one day. 

Every year we choose some type of wearable art project to celebrate...

 

And this year we tried dip-dying.

I chose it because it was relatively simple and we all weren't going to be there until the actual day of Fourth of July.

The kids brought both denim and white items that they already owned or that they found at thrift stores.

The first step was bleaching out the denim...

 

This step took much longer than we expected so there was lots of hurry up and wait.  

I started with a three parts water to two parts bleach mix but that was taking a long time.  Lets just say that watching denim get bleached out is akin to watching paint dry...

That's when Jim suggested industrial strength bleach.  What?  There's different bleach strengths?  He ran to the hardware store and we mixed the stronger bleach;  two parts water and one part bleach.  

That sped things up a bit but it still took us a couple of hours to bleach out our items.

After bleaching, we had to wash and dry everything before dip dying.  In hindsight, we should have bleached days in advance to save time.  Experience is the greatest teacher.

When we finally got to the dip-dying...that went incredibly quickly and the results were immediate...

Bleach pens came in handy for fixing the stray drip...



Or for use as a design element...



Ideally, we should have let each color dry before dipping in the next but it was already becoming late afternoon...



So we rinsed out the dye while the items were still wet which affected the vibrancy...

But not the fun factor...



We also found that pre-worn and old denim bleached out the best.  Really dark, new denim never quite bleached out to white...more of a gray.

And the colors were more muted...which might be desirable for a more understated look...


Not all of us chose to dip-dye.  Ellie used her bleached denim shirt as a canvas for a painted design...
 

And we have a new furry family member, Moose, who was there to help tame the zoo...

Moose is calm in comparison.
By the time we were finished, there was very little time to wash/dry our items and get dressed for the night so we scattered without a group picture.



I remembered to snap one picture after dinner and before the fireworks...

I think we all agree that we'd like to re-try the dip dye activity...especially if we spread it out over a series of days, doing one dye step at a time and letting each step dry thoroughly in the sun before rinsing.

Time was our issue this year.  A harbinger of years to come, I think.

That means we'll have to come up with another way.

Maybe I'll have to mail pre-work or prep kits to everyone next year...hmmm....

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You can see our past patriotic projects here:

2014:  Patriotic Wrap Bracelets Part I and Part II
2013:  The Jean Shorts of July

2012:  The Feet of the Fourth

2011:  Fascinators (Part I) and How We Made Them (Part II)

2010:  T-Shirts

2009:  T-Shorts

2008:  Baseball Hats

Close Call for the Nieces

Easter Butterflies

Last week Jimmy and I returned to Naples, Florida to spend Easter with my father.

Every day Jim and I trekked through the mangroves to visit the beach...



We were lucky that there was another Osprey pair this year with three fledglings in their nest.  I love to watch the Dad fish.  Last year, I wrote this post where the sea hawk caught a Florida pompano.  This year, he entertained again by catching this gar fish...



It didn't look like a very big meal...

But when you've got three hungry mouths to feed, you eat whatever you can catch...



The weather was calm and mild the entire time we were there which made for perfect beach-going.

There wasn't much of a wrack line this time...



Which was a huge blessing in disguise.

A full wrack line is like having too many choices on a buffet.  You tend to select the larger, more unusual dishes.   If there had been too much competition, I'm afraid we would have missed the treasures that actually were there.

Coquina shells. Donax Variabilis.
 

Small, edible saltwater clams that live below the sand in shallow water along East Coast beaches.

While I stooped to collect these tiny shells, an older German woman whom I had befriended that week approached with her cane.  She walked the beach every morning and we had struck up multiple conversations throughout the week about shells and birds and clams...basically, any and all wildlife that we saw in the mornings.

When she saw me down low, she said, "Oh, hello.  I see you've found something to collect."

"Coquina shells, " I said.  "Only little shells are here these days."

"Oh!" She exclaimed.  "They are so Be-YOU-tiful.  All those pretty colors.  I have a whole dish of them I keep out.  Just beautiful!  You have to be careful to clean them well though or they stink.  A little bit of the clam sticks to the shell and you have to get that out."

I waved to her as she went on her way, leaving this egret behind fishing in the surf.



I went back to collecting the tiny marvels and found they were most easily spotted in shallow water, as the lapping water lifted them up and they floated back down...



I wanted to find a way to share the pleasure of shell hunting, so I took a picture just for you.  Think of it as a virtual shell hunt.

There are eight coquina shells (3 doubles and 5 singles) in the picture below.  Can you find them all? (I'll reveal the answer in the bottom of the post.)

While I continued the delicate job of picking up wee bitsy clam shells, another woman approached and told me that she had grown up on Coquina Beach.  As children, she and her siblings had eaten the little clams as they played; their parents had made coquina broth from boiling the live mollusks in salted water.  I found a recipe here.  Who knew?

Jim and I weren't up to harvesting live clams, so we took our empty, bitty bivalves back home and followed the German woman's advice of washing the shells carefully...

Spending the time to pick out any remaining organic matter.  It was a tedious task as the shells ranged in size from 5mm to 18mm.

But it was exactly this slow, methodical care with each and every shell that caused me to fall in love...over and over again.

Together they were a kaleidoscope of Easter butterflies...



And individually, they were every shade of pastel with stripes and delightful combinations.



Like a box of antique buttons, each one held its own charm...

As I washed, dried and sorted my delicate swarm of shells, my father watched perplexed.  "What," he kept asking, "Are you going to do with all of those?"

"I don't know yet, Dad.  But aren't they amazing?"

"Hmmpff, " was all he said.

What I was going to do with them?  I didn't yet know.

But when Dad, Jim and I went to an Antique Mall the next day, look what I found...



This kitschy, old-fashioned souvenir bouquet of shell flowers.  It was love at first sight.

And look...

There are flowers made from all those tiny coquina shells.

And the hummingbird has a set of coquina wings...



Yesterday, I unpacked and sorted all the paired coquinas by color and placed them in a collection box...

A palette from the sea.

And I took all the single shells and placed them in a dish...just as my German friend had suggested.

And here they sit as I type this post to remind us that Summer is coming and the world is full of wonder and joy.

My new collection has led me down a path of researching shellwork which was all the rage in 18th century England.  I found this stunning example of shellwork from the reign of George III...

And then I remembered that my friend Mrs. Delany had created shellwork in addition to her 1,000 flower collages and amazing embroideries.  So I'm busy following that lead.

Looks like there's more shell embroideries in my future.  Found on the Beach might have to become a series.

Blowing kisses to you all and hoping that some unexpected delight washes up on your beach ;)

P.S.  Here's the solution to the virtual coquina search...



And here's a few other interesting shells that were also in the shot...