Learn how to make your own faux vintage glass fishing floats to use as beautiful coastal décor. Leave them unadorned or tie some netting around them for an added nautical look!

This is a project that I have been wanting to do for some time! Ever since I made this sea glass rope lantern, I have wanted to make some faux glass fishing floats to go along with it. I did not get around to it then and I guess I have not decorated with a coastal theme since then, so I did not have a reason to make some. Until now, that is. 🙂

I know I promised a summer mantel last week but that will have to wait, because I have a couple crafts to share with you first. They all revolve around this same beachy-coastal theme though so I bet you can guess what my summer mantel theme is. 😉

What are glass fishing floats?

If you are wondering what the heck these glass fishing floats are, you are not alone. When I first saw them, I just thought of them as cool nautical décor, glass balls with netting tied around them, right? But little did I know, they actually served a purpose.

The fishing floats were used by fisherman initially in Norway, as early as 1840, as glass buoys to hold up their fishing nets. In 1910, they became popular in Japan when they had a booming fishing industry. Japan produced the majority of the glass floats that are found washed up on the shores of the west coast of the US. That is why they are commonly referred to as Japanese fishing floats.

They are found in the ocean because the fishermen would cut the glass balls free since their netting and catch was more profitable. The most common colors found are aqua, blue and green. That is because the fishing floats were made from recycled glass. However you can find them in various other colors too.

The glass buoys were made until around 1970 when they started being replaced by plastic or aluminum floats. They commonly washed up on shore after storms in the 1950’s-1970’s, however, it is more rare to find them nowadays. It is even rarer to find one with the netting still on it as the salt water would usually deteriorate the rope.

Because of this these sea glass balls are considered vintage. People can fetch a big price tag for authentic glass fishing floats, especially the bigger they are. Seeing that, I decided to attempt to make some faux floats rather than spend a lot of money on authentic ones.

What to make faux fishing floats out of?

I wanted my floats to look as real as possible so I began to look for hollow glass balls. Unfortunately, I found out that there are not a lot of options out there.  🙁  I found other tutorials where people have made them out of glass vases and ornaments. While the ornament idea was great for smaller sized balls, I also wanted to make a couple bigger floats as well.

I started searching for glass globes for light fixtures and came across some replacement light fixtures at Lowe’s. They did not have any that were clear glass in stock so I ended up getting the ribbed glass ones. In the end, I actually like the texture that the ribbed glass gives and my family all agreed.

Supplies to make DIY floats

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

• Clear glass or plastic ornaments of various sizes – I used both as I wanted to see what looked better
• Glass globe light fixtures
• Mod Podge
• Food Coloring
• Jute rope – 4 ply and 3 ply
• Hemp twine
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Scissors
• Plastic cups

Here is a video of the process

Don’t want to read all the instructions? Here is a video showing you how make the DIY glass fishing floats. If you can’t see the video, turn off your ad blocker. If you want more detailed instructions, continue reading.

 

How to dye the glass floats

To make the “dye”, pour Mod Podge into a measuring cup to around the 1/4 cup mark. Add drops of the food coloring to make various colors of aqua. Here are the different variations I used:

• 3 drops of blue + 2 drops of green
• 3 drops of blue, 2 drops of green and 2 drops of yellow
• 5 drops of blue, 2 drops of green and 2 yellow
• 7 drops of blue, 2 drops of green and 2 yellow

Feel free to play around with different variations. I did not wash out the measuring cup in between the colors. I used a bamboo stick to mix it all together. Don’t worry, it will wash out of the measuring cup! Pour some of your mixture into your “float” and slowly swirl into around until it coats the entire inside of the float. Pour out the excess glue into the measuring cup.

Set the floats upside down on plastic cups or bowls depending on their sizes. The wet glue color will be totally opaque and lighter in color than the end product. The glue dries completely transparent. 

Next is the hardest part, you have to be super patient! Set them aside and let them dry for a couple days… literally! It took a LONG time to dry. After a bit of time, I started getting impatient and turned the ornaments on their sides thinking they were not getting enough air inside them. Bad idea! That left some pooling of the glue on the inside of some of the floats. Don’t do that.

After the second overnight of them still not being dry inside, I decided to help them along. I got my hair dryer and a funnel, which blew the air into the balls on a cool setting. LOL This finally helped!! This was still not a quick process though. I would have had this tutorial done way sooner if not for the drying time. Ha!

One way to help the drying time may be to add a little water to thin out your glue mixture but I am not sure on that. I wanted it to coat really well on the inside of the floats, so I left it full strength. Here is a picture of some of the dripping and pooling I got from turning them on their sides. Other than that, they looked great! Oh well, you live and you learn!

How to tie on netting

Now comes the fun part! Tying netting onto the fishing floats. 🙂 If you are familiar with macramé, you will see that this is very similar. I was somewhat familiar with this process from my sea glass rope lantern project. I used three different sizes of jute rope and hemp twine for my fishing floats. The bigger 4 ply jute was used for the light fixture globe. I used the 3 ply jute rope and hemp twine on the various sized ornaments.

To determine how much rope you will need, wrap the rope around the ornament 4-5 times. This will allow for some extra length at the end to braid or cut off if you prefer.

Next cut as many strings as “spokes” in your netting that you want. You can see what I mean in a picture a little later on. When cutting the last piece, cut it about 5 inches longer. This longer piece of rope will be the beginning piece you will use.

I decided to use the opening on the ornaments as the anchor for my netting. It did not really bother me that there is an opening, however this helped to camouflage it a little. Plus this way, the opening is usually placed down in your basket or wherever you display your nautical glass floats.

Double over your long string making sure the ends are even and put the end pieces through the loop. Hold your fingers in the loop you made while you tighten it up. This will eventually fit over the opening of the ornament as shown below.

But first, place the loop loosely around the bottom of a mason jar (or something similar) to tie on your first pieces to your netting. Take the remaining strings that you cut and double them over, again making sure they are even on the ends. Place the looped end under the string around the mason jar. Stick the ends through the loop and pull tight. Tie on all the strings this way.

Now place this string around the opening of the ornament and pull it tight. Space out all the “spokes”. You can see in this example, I have five spokes. The beginning longer piece of rope plus four more that I tied on. Put a dab of hot glue under the beginning rope and on the opposing side to hold it down. This will keep it secure when you are tying the knots.

To tie a knot, take one string from each spoke and tie them together as shown below.

Continue this pattern around all the spokes.

Now for the next layer, repeat the same process taking one string coming out of adjacent knots and tying them together in the same way. Try to keep even spacing in between the knots. You can always adjust the knots after you tie the whole layer if needed. 

Keep repeating this pattern until you have enough knots to cover your ornament. I put my ornament in a Styrofoam cup in a mason jar to tie the strings on. This made it a little easier to work with without it moving all over. My last knotted layer was below the rim of the Styrofoam cup.

Gather all the strings at the end and now you can decide what to do with them. You can either braid them, or tie them with a string then cut them off.

For this fishing float, I decided to do a 5 strand braid and loop it to make a handle. After I braided it, I looped it. Then I split the ends in half and wrapped the ends around the handle going in opposite directions. Lastly, I hot glued the ends down.

As you can see in the pictures, on some of the other fishing floats, I left the braid long or cut off the ends.

I did try one float where I started it on the opposite end than the opening. This looks nice too! I love the look of the smaller hemp twine as well! It looks really authentic to me.

Is this something you think you would try? It was very easy! Like I said the hardest part is having patience waiting for them to dry! Ha!