A Little Sand Therapy

There were a thousand other things I needed to do today, but a project called my name instead. It's been a very long time since I've done anything for just me, so I justified the time as creative therapy!

 When I was cleaning out my childhood home, I ran across a box filled with bottles and bags of sand I had collected on family vacations. I'm not surprised my mom had saved it all these years. She knew it was important to me. I still love and collect sand so I decided that I would gather up all of it and make a display. I've had this project brewing in my head all summer long, and I'm excited I finally had a chance to work on it.

 I started by gathering all of my more recent sand acquisitions from various places around the house and combined them with my childhood sand collection. I had much more sand than I anticipated! I initially thought I would use small bottles for the sand and get rid of the rest, but it was too pretty not to use all of it. So I decided that I would incorporate a few larger jars, too. 

I've been on the lookout for jars this summer. I initially thought about using matching spice jars from Penzeys, but then after seeing a few sand collections on Pinterest, I realized that wasn't the look I envisioned. I decided to use a variety of jars since I wanted the display to have a natural, organic look, as if it had been created over time. This was the perfect opportunity to use the glass jars I've had for years which have just been collecting dust.  My intent was to give the collection of unrelated jars a cohesive look by using similar tags on each container.

I also brought home a few favorite shells and such from family trips and decided to incorporate some into my display.

 

I picked up a couple of larger jars with wooden lids at Target and combined them with cork-lidded jars I already had.

 

I found tall cork-lidded plastic jars at Memory Bound for some of the sand. I added a little ink to make the corks look old. A funnel I found in Mom's kitchen proved handy for this part of the project. (Sorry, Mom!)
  

 I have been on the lookout for wooden trays and found a couple of really nice ones at Target. I considered buying a larger one with handles but decided I didn't want to devote quite that much space to this display. I opted for the simpler, smaller tray and decided to make my sand collection fit on it, no matter what. (I did end up with some large jars filled with extra sand that did not fit, so I put them elsewhere in the house. I was OK with that since those beaches were represented in smaller jars on my tray!)

Fortunately I had labeled most of my sand, even the sand from my childhood. There were a few containers that were not labeled (I'm obviously slipping...) but I was able to identify most of them by searching the internet for photos of seashores I have visited. I put quotes on two of the jars with sand I couldn't identify and added a metal charm to another one.

 

I tied twine around the neck of each jar. I used Glossy Accents to glue large shells to the tops of a couple of the jars, covering the folk star on one of them.

 

I printed tags and cut them out with my Spellbinders dies. I added eyelets and inked the tags.

 


 Here's the completed project! I'm pleased with how it turned out. It's small enough to sit on a coffee table, ottoman, or in my craft room.

This project was good therapy for me...maybe the next best thing to actually walking along the seashore!
jp

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 P.S. Not one hour after finishing this project, can you guess what I found? A jar with MORE SAND and SHELLS! And, since it has a black lid, the new jar is a better match for my project than the jar with the large shell (the reddish tint of that lid was bothering me anyway). So I put that jar back with the scrapbook from that trip and substituted this new jar. Since it contains unmarked sand, I added a metal tag with a seagull which I found in my stash.

OK, NOW it's done. :) I think.
jp