Maui Open Market (MOM) Action

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Maui Open Market (MOM) is currently located in the sprawling front lawn of  Maui Tropical Plantation with plans in the near future to relocate further back to help vendors with the wind factor. It is open on Sundays and Mondays from 9am to 3pm. You can catch the Natural Maui Ohana there on most days depending on whether we have an ohana function to attend or not.

 

Master carver displays some of his craft work. People love his work, here are some customers deciding which carving they want to buy

Entertainment :)

A free concert :) Great and there’s enough lawn room to put a blanket down buy lunch from one of the food booths and just relax and listen to some good island music.

Pat adjusting the tech knobs :)

What a beautiful day it was and what a good crowd too!

Maui Open Market (MOM) greeter! Free samples of freshly made state of the art coconut candy. She sells out by 12noon so gotta hurry if you want some :)

Mahalo for stopping by Maui Open Market (MOM)!

Natural Maui Ohana at Maui Open Market (MOM)

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These are photos I took today at Maui Open Market (MOM) of our sea glass, shell, and upcycled jewelry. It was looking nice today and we got some really interested customers that also collect sea glass on their travels.

 

This is our shell tree where we display our puka and shell pieces earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. Notice the photo of Richard bodyboarding in the background. We show this photo because that’s how we started making jewelry, Rel and I would beach comb while Richard bodyboarded

Faux wili wili (read my post here at this blog on faux wili wili) and puka shell earrings and bracelet set. The necklace was sold.

Clam shell pieces, very large, made into these very simple but exotic earrings. I know these pieces have been tumbling in the ocean for ages because all the edges are really smooth. I made my first pair of earrings from our beach comb findings from clam shell pieces just like this

Cluster earrings of lime green, white, and cobalt sea glass

Cone shell earrings with cobalt sea glass dangles

Clam shell piece with lime green and cobalt sea glass dangle necklace. On the right top is a pair of lime green earrings and on the bottom right is a pair of cobalt earrings. One or both sets can be purchased to go with the necklace :)

Some of our necklaces with price range from 15.00 to 40.00

Rare deep aqua earrings accented with silver plated whale tail charms and blue crystal beads.

Large cone shell top that didn’t puka with aqua, amber, and white sea glass dangle necklace. Rel has a special story to tell about this necklace and what it represents to her.

Some of our 10.00 necklaces

Our 5.00 rings made with green, brown, and white sea glass, shell pieces and cowry shells, all of it found on Maui :)

Our 15.00 rings of rare and choice pieces of sea glass, puka shells, cone shells, and drupe shells. All rings are adjustable

Deep aqua with a hint of green sea glass, very rare, very elegant, wire wrapped using my signature “Slipper Wrap” technique. Earrings and necklace can be sold separately but if purchased as a set we give a discount

Table shot of our upcycled jewelry, sea glass, and shell jewelry

This wonderful couple also collects sea glass. They saw my pile of aqua/turquoise sea glass and picked 2 which I promptly wire wrapped for her while they cruised around the Maui Open Market.

Rel holding down the fort while I go around snapping away at Maui Open Market (MOM)

We had a good crowd of people today at Maui Open Market (MOM), here is a snap shot of just a few of our customers, one of them I made a pair of earrings for

I Love our new set up with the wind breaker around 2 sides of our tent, it really helps

Here she is modeling the aqua/turquoise earrings I made for her and I managed to get our Natural Maui sign in the background

Upcycled Glass Jewelry ~ Beautiful, Truly Unique OOAK Designed Jewelry

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I posted before that one day we would add tumbled glass jewelry to our line as sea glass becomes harder and harder to find. Well, here it is My oldest daughter Sophia has been collecting broken glass ware, vases, old bottles, crystal bowls, and she’s been shaping and cutting then tumbling her glass to create truly unique one of a kind designer jewelry to add to the Natural Maui Ohana line of jewelry.

She really became interested in, what we have named, upcycled glass jewelry while she was doing her internship at the Maui County Recycling Department. It was a logical decision not only because sea glass is becoming scarce but also because there are some warm colors like yellow and red, which are extremely rare to find in sea glass, that add color to the table.

Interesting note is that the extremely rare colors to find in sea glass, red, orange, yellow, turquoise, are also hard to find in regular glass land! We’ve managed to get red but it’s not red all the way, it’s red color on each side of clear glass but it is still so beautiful!

We let customers know that it’s tumbled glass but we don’t lower our prices because it’s been tumbled. First of all the yellow and turquoise are from crystal ware that was broken that we received from some friends of ours. Crystal is not a glass to be trifled with but the most important point of all is the work that goes into creating a design in her mind and then actually making it materialize.

There are more colors to come to! Pink from a vase she received from her boss, dark olive green from a very old wine bottle that I found at a thrift store that was cut. I can’t wait to see what designs that head of hers comes up with next. She’s very quiet and focused when she works. Something I really admire about her.

White upcycled glass cluster with pearls dangle earrings

Olive green upcycled glass with real clam shell and silver colored metal clam shell

Upcycled olive green glass hoop earrings with real clam shell and silver colored metal clam shell

Olive green upcycled glass bracelet with real clam shell piece and silver colored metal clam shell

Dragon Fly Cone Shell Earrings. One of my favorite sets, white upcycled glass with cone shell (found on Maui), silver colored dragonfly charm, and deep pink beads. There’s also a bracelet and necklace to match.

Dragon Fly and Cone Shell trio, Earrings, Necklace, Bracelet. White upcycled glass, silver colored dragon fly charm, cone shell (found on Maui), and pink beads make up this trio. Special discount when the set is purchased together.

Close up of Dragon Fly Cone Shell Trio

Large Puka Shell with red, green, and yellow upcycled glass hoops. The puka shells were found by the Natural Maui Ohana. It dangles from hoops with red, green, and yellow upcycled glass.

Puka Shell and red, green, yellow upcycled glass bracelet

Red Green Yellow upcycled glass bracelet. This is definitely different from anything I’ve ever seen. Here Sophia used white abalone shell at each end of the bracelet staggering red, green, and yellow upcycled glass, shell pieces (found on Maui), and beads staggered in between

Large puka shell with red, green and yellow upcycled glass necklace. This is part of a trio set of earrings, necklace, and bracelet. Special discount if bought as a set.

Shell pieces, yellow upcycled glass, and black onyx beads. This is the necklace and bracelet and there are also earrings to match. Special discount when purchased as a complete set.

Shell pieces, yellow upcycled glass and black onyx beads earrings

Beautiful turquoise upcycled glass necklace choker with matching bracelet

Bracelets made with yellow and turquoise upcycled glass

Turquoise upcycled glass dangling from abalone shell bead bars attached to curled loop hoops

Large puka shells in hoops with olive green upcycled glass dangling

Olive green, turquoise, and green upcycled glass sets of necklaces and bracelets

Red upcycled glass with Chinese turquoise dangle earrings

Bracelet of aqua upcycled glass and shell pieces staggered between 2 abalone shell beads. There is a matching pair of earrings to this.

Another really different pair of earrings using aqua upcycled glass, cowry shell pieces (found on Maui) dangling from an abalone shell bead. There is a matching bracelet, the necklace was sold.

Red, yellow, and green upcycled glass dangle earrings

Turquoise upcycled glass and puka shell dangle earrings

Red upcycled glass with black and red beads adorn these silver plated curled loop hoops

Maui Swap Meet 5/5/2012

Today is my sister Norma’s birthday ~ Happy Birthday my dear sweet sister! hope you’re enjoying your day and it is also my grandnephew Hoku’s birthday Happy Birthday Hoku! I Love You both soooo much!

Today is also the day that Disney Cruise Lines pulled into Kahului Harbor in Maui for the very first time! And I believe they will be coming back a second time this year Well, a few of the passengers from Disney Cruise Lines worked their way to the Maui Swap Meet and to our booth. I hope they enjoy the earrings they bought from us!

Disney Cruise Lines is only here for one day. We saw the cruise line on our way home. So exciting! Seeing Mickey Mouse’s ears on the top I am a huge fan of Disney, anything Disney and would be so ecstatic to go on a cruise one day!

Here are a few pics from today’s set up at Maui Swap Meet using the new wind/sun shield we bought at Lowe’s yesterday. It worked out really well for us but the real test will be tomorrow at the Maui Open Market (MOM) located on the sprawling front lawn of the Maui Tropical Plantation. It gets really really windy there so this was a good investment for us.

Beach Finds 5/4/2012, Lots of Marbles ;)

I didn’t realize I collected 9 marbles

This is all I got today.

More shots of the marbles, I got a couple pieces of aqua blue and lots of beautiful shell pieces manufactured by the Sea Goddess herself *;-D

Only a couple of whole cone shells and quite a bit of cowry shells.

Puka shells so in demand in the 70s and 80s now so hard to find but I manage to get my share.

Close up of some of the shell pieces, the 2 pink and white pieces on the right bottom will make a beautiful set of earrings.

More whites. I said I need white sea glass and voila! I collected bunches on all 3 days and I am very happy!!!

Beach Finds 5/3/2012

The first piece I found was the purple sea glass. I also found a root beer sea glass piece and some milk glass.

Found a few deep aqua sea glass pieces.

Again I found a lot of whites, I am a happy camper

There was a few pieces of new cobalt blue pieces coming in, I miss the days when i would find so many deep dark almost black cobalt blues. I kept a lot of choice pieces of sea glass that I found when I first started collecting.

Antique Maltine Sea Glass Bottle Top

Sea Glass Maltine Bottle Top

Maltine bottle top

From reading “Pure Sea Glass”, a book by Richard LaMotte who did extensive research on sea glass and where sea glass could possibly originate from, I could tell that this bottle top was from an old antique bottle so I did a little research.

When I research I try determine whether this type of bottle could have possibly found its way here (continued)

Sea Glass, Shell, Beach Finds 5/2/2012

On this day my children and I found 5 marbles, an antique bottle top, 2 ceramic toppers (maybe from teapots), lots and lots of purple cone shells in perfect shape, lots of puka shells and lots of white sea glass which we really need.

Makena Beach and Golf Resort Craft Fair May 1, 2012

Rel took a picture of me with our table display. Usually she is in the pictures but we decided to trade this time. Our sign is home made by me, I love making our own stuff, even our business cards but that can be time consuming so every once in awhile we’ll just print cards. The “Natural Maui” is really clear!

There are lots more photos HERE of the entertainment too!

This was the first time we participated in a craft fair at a Hotel so not knowing what to expect we really down sized, the less to carry the better especially since we didn’t know how far we’d have to walk and we don’t have a dolly. When we got there, there being the Makena Beach and Golf Resort, we were allowed to use the dolly’s from the hotel which “whew’ is a good thing because it was a very long walk to the 1st lobby which is the same level as the pool and the beach.

It was a really spacious area with lots of room for crafters. The weather was nice, no rain, not too hot and it didn’t get windy until about 12noon. Business was really good from about 9am to about 11:30am and after that it died down drastically. It just so happens to be a day when everyone was checking out and new check ins were coming in the next day. Still and all we had a really good day, even though we didn’t have height.

What was fun was we were supposed to use aloha print but since I didn’t really like the aloha print we had we used pieces of tapa/kapa cloth distributed strategically throughout our table display. It turned out looking really nice.

We are really looking forward to doing another craft fair there and we’ll be more prepared this time

Creating A Sea Glass, Shell, Upcycled Glass Jewelry Display on a Very Tight Budget

We have had just about the same craft fair set up we’ve had since we started selling our sea glass and shell jewelry almost 2 years ago. Needless to say it was getting old and boring for us so we wanted to do something nicer. Put more thought into it. Although we received a lot of compliments on our first display I felt it was chaotic and wanted to create something that would make our jewelry “pop out” more. And, we’ve also added my oldest daughters line of recycled glass jewelry which is looking very, very beautiful and very very artistic too.

See photos and comments on materials we gathered and what we did to make it all work HERE