We have just got back from a lovely weekend away at Butlins Bognor Regis. Right outside the Butlins complex is a rather lovely pebble beach. So on Saturday myself and sister took the children to the beach during low tide. The perfect time to beach combe.
The toddlers beach combing
The kids love collecting bits and bobs in their buckets. We collected some interesting pebbles, a few stuffed with Quartz crystal, some pretty shells and best of all some lovely pieces of sea glass for jewellery making.
It was my daughter Alice-Sara who had the best eye for finding sea glass. She found mostly clear glass (which now has this frosted white appearance) and some pieces of green glass.
So just what is sea glass?
Here’s a Wikipedia definition for sea glass…
“Sea glass or beach glass is physically and chemically weathered glass found on beaches along bodies of fresh and salt water. These weathering processes produce natural frosted glass. Sea glass can be collected as a hobby and can be used to create jewellery”
We found that looking for this special glass during low tide produced greater results. We sat and used our hands to search through the pebbles along the tide line.
We didn’t find loads of the glass but did find a few nice pieces, enough to make a few nice items of jewellery.
Other pieces we found were lovely but not ideal pieces for jewellery, purely because these had some chips and were a little irregular. However these would look awesome if used for a mosaic project.
Here’s a few other bits the children found…
Natural formed quartz crystal the images fail to show just how sparkly this really is
<em>Huge shells and crazy looking pieces of sea plants
Tiny shells found by the toddlers
Some strange yet interesting rocks
Mummy Of Many Talents 