Let's make a Shell Moblie.

Our beach is a treasure trove of beautiful shells. The rock pools are filled with brightly gleaming shells, gorgeous colors of the rainbow shimmering in the water. Many of the shells that have washed up on the beach have been bleached white by the sun. We have strolled for hours, collecting such beautiful treasure. Today, we made a pretty shell mobile. We chose all of the shells we have collected that had holes in them.

We needed,

* scissors
* ribbon or string
* shells with holes in them.


Kitty and her cousin cut a length of white ribbon and tied a shell onto the end to form the stopper for the other shells.

They threaded all of her sells onto the ribbon.

They look so lovely hanging together... soft colors bleached by the sun.

Different shapes and sizes.

We hung it from the Milkwood tree in front of our house and it sways gently in the breeze.

The proud artists, standing with the shell necklaces they also made today.

Sometimes, the simplest things are the prettiest.

Blessings and magic,

Donni

Make a cute Halloween Votive.

Finally, Mr T (our Tibetan Wind) was allowed to play in K's sand painting. He love it, running his finger through the colors and seeing how they mixed together making a new color all together. He twirled the sand, heaped it, flattened it, until it was a rainbow mixture.

When he tired of it, I picked up the glass dish K's sand rainbow had been in to throw the sand away.

"What are you doing, Mummy?" K asked in horror.

"Why? I'm throwing it away."

"But MOMMY!! You CANT!! It's SPECIAL sand!!! It's MY sand!"

"Ok... well" I managed, clearly at a loss. What on earth was I to do with a dish of murky sand?

Then I remembered something I saw years ago... a little glass candle votive that had been covered in sand. It gave off such a gentle, warm glow. Perhaps we could get just one more sand activity from our colored sand! And with a little fun, maybe I could even turn it into a Halloween craft!!

This is what we needed to make our Halloween votive candle...

Two glass candle holders, SPECIAL SAND, sticky tape, scissors, glue, paint brush.

I cut out pumpkins from the sticky tape and stuck them onto the glass votive...

K wanted a Jack-a-lantern, so we cut a scary mouth, triangle nose and triangle eyes from the sticky tape and stuck them into place.

Then we painted the votives with glue.

Rolled them in the sand...

So that they were totally covered...

And set them in the sun to dry.

Then, when the sand had completely dried, we carefully peeled the sticky tape from the glass. It was a little hard to see where the sticky tape was and, in the future, I'll use colored tape instead of clear tape to make this easier. Wonderful clear glass pumpkins and Jack-a-lanterns glowed in the morning sun!

The kids couldn't wait for the sun to set. We lit our votive candles and watched their warm glow flicker happily.
Happy Halloween !

Be sure to come back on Friday's to participate in Friday's Nature Table, our nature collective where we share our nature-inspired posts.

Blessings and magic.

How to make Miniature tools for your Zen Garden.

I promised to show you how we made our Zen Garden tools.

We needed our trusty glue gun, our garden scissors, some sticks and twigs, an acorn cap and a shell.

First, the rake. I used my garden scissors to cut a twig for the handle, a smaller twig for the rakes head and 5 tiny twigs for the rakes teeth.

With my glue gun, I stuck the head of the rake to the handle...

Then I stuck the 5 teeth to the head and...

Voila! The rake was complete.

Then for the acorn scooper...
I used my good 'ol glue gun to stick the acorn head to the stick handle... Now this must be the cutest little Zen Garden tool ever! It scoops sand wonderfully and makes lovely moon shapes in the sand scape.

Now for the shell spade...

My friend the glue gun once again did his magic by sticking the shell to the driftwood handle.

Zen, isn't it?!
So here they are, the twig rake, the acorn scooper and the shell spade. All have been played with endlessly in our Miniature Zen Garden which you can see here.

Blessings and magic.

How to make a pendant from Sea Glass.

Sea Glass is our present beach obsession... we walk along the surf for hours in the early morning, searching for these frosty treasures. They come in all shapes and sizes; green's, aqua's, brown's, white's... Our collection has outgrown it's tea cup and now is quickly filling it's bucket.

A Good Man recently asked what I was going to do with my Sea Glass treasure. Alas, I had no answer... I had been collecting it for the joy of finding something. But his question got me thinking how I could put our sea-treasure to use.

Sea Glass jewelry is one idea. We decided to make a pendant.

All we needed was our Sea Glass, thin, bendy wire and our pliers.

I cut a bit more than an arms length of wire with my pliers. I used the rasp on the pliers to file the ends of the wire so that they could not hurt me.
Then I wrapped the Sea Glass tightly with the wire.
I finished it by making a hoop where the chain would thread and twisted it for strength.
Voila! A Sea Glass pendant, in all of 10 minutes!
I wore it all day and K remarked a few times how pretty it looked.
Beware any friends who's birthdays are coming up... guess what I'm going to make for you?

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.