How to make Colored Sand.

Mr T insisted on bringing home a bucket of sand from the beach. Unlike me, he loves sand so much and can play with it for hours. He really doesn't mind if it gets in his hair, his clothes, his bed!

So, to enthuse with this love, we decided to make colored sand.

This is what we needed;

a bucket of sand

a sieve

6 large Ziploc bags

6 colors of foodcoloring

spoons

paper towels

water

We made little bowls from the Ziplock bags like this...

We set our sieve in the Ziploc bowl and filled it with sand.

As the sand was from the beach, it was full of small shells that we wanted to separate from the sand. T loves to sift stuff. He took this job very seriously and meticulously sifted all the shells from the clean sand.

We arranged the sand-filled bags on the grass as the next step is to add the food coloring. We wanted to make sure that a mistake did not mean a permanently colored patio!

Granny helped Mr T wet the sand with water from a jug.
We added enough water to make the sand soggy. Too much water will make it hard for the sand to absorb the food coloring.

K joined us for the fun task of adding color to our soggy sand. We added food coloring liberally.

Then we zipped up the bags and massaged the color into the sand. K loved the tactile nature of massaging the sand through the bag. It was cool and squishy and made a wonderful scrunching noise if you listened carefully.

We added different colors to our bags of sand and then laid them flat for 30 minutes to let the sand absorb the color.

Then we turned each bag out onto a couple of sheets of strong paper towels to dry in the sand.

It dried in a day. Tomorrow we are going to use our colored sand to make something fun... stay tuned!
Blessings and magic.

Wonderful Beach Treasures.

It was an overcast and windy day and we needed to blow the cobwebs from our heads. There is a beach that we call 'The Peninsula' not far from us. We love this beach as the sea is rough and the waves bring treasures from the sea onto the beach for lucky searchers to find... this is where we found ourselves... on top of the sand dunes, looking out over the vast bay.

To our delight, the high-tide-mark was strewn with sea treasures.

And we discovered that these sea treasures could be used to make all manner of things... Boats waiting patiently for the tide to take them out to see.
K took her nature journal to log all the 'especial' things we saw.
A small flock of Godwits patrolled the surf, looking for little delicacies in the sand. They were wonderful to watch as they poked their strong, long beaks down holes to find their breakfast. If you click on this photo, you will be able to see the sand still sticking to this fellows beak.
A colander full of sea treasure was collected.

When we got home, it was diligently washed...

And lined up for inspection.

The shells...
The sea bricks, worn smooth by many, many years of attrition on the sea floor... we think they might have come from the ledgend city of Atlantis.
Drift wood, rubbed smooth by the water and waves. Do you think one of these pieces of driftwood came from the raft Robinson Crusoe sailed on to find his island?
And our favorite, Sea Glass. We would not have known of the value of these little sea gems if it were not for the wonderful Garden Mama who wrote about it in this post a few weeks ago.

What treasures the sea gave us. Before we left her beach, we gazed out over her vast expanse and said a blessing of thanks and cast a wish into her depths that people everywhere would respect her bounty and protect her treasures.

Here is a story about another treasure nature gave us.

Blessings and magic.