Beach Combing For Sea Glass

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

Kids Crafts – Painting Pebbles

We, meaning myself and the kids, collected lots of pebbles while on our recent trip to the seaside. Once we got them home we decided we would paint them for the garden.

Our pebbles would be used to brighten up flowerpots and flower beds. Here’s what we used…

Various Pebbles (collected from the beach)
Acrylic paints (various colours)
Mod Podge
Googly Eyes
Glitter glue

You can paint your pebbles anyhow you like the possibilities are endless. This is a great little craft project that you can do with the kids. My very own toddler loved it.

The activity held my creative little three year olds attention for over an hour. He painted in various colours before adding different coloured googly eyes and painting on red smiles.

His little stones were painted and glittered… Messy but fun.

Once the toddlers pebbles were dry I added a layer of Mod Podge to give them a shine as well as a protective layer.

Yourself, along with the kids, can let the imagination run wild painting & creating allsorts of designs and patterns from funny faces to dinosaurs, dots to hearts.

We also made some pebble bugs using paint and googly eyes. For our bees and lady birds we used some foam pieces to form the wings. For our spider we used some garden wire for the legs. These are currently busy drying on the window pane, but I’ll be sure to post another little update once they are dry and ready to display.

As for Harley’s wacky face pebbles, we plan to place them around the flower beds in our garden today (given it remains bright and sunny that is).

Hope we have inspired you to have fun with paints.

Remember… Painting on paper is fun but painting on pebbles is awesome!

Tutorial – Inspiring Word Pebbles

When on holiday recently we visited the local beach which was made up off shingles and pebbles as opposed to sand. With so many on offer, I decided I’d take some home for crafting purposes. We collected all different types of pebble and had great fun doing so. We ended up with a huge bucket full consisting of all kinds of shapes sizes and textures.

So just what am I planning to do with all these pebbles. Well, some of the pebbles will be painted in various designs by myself and the toddler. These will then be lovingly placed around the garden, in pots and plant beds. The rest I’m planning to decorate using inspiring word art. These decorative pebbles can be placed around the home or given as gifts. Its the latter I’m going to share with you all today.

What you’ll need…

Pebbles (various sizes, smooth and flat)

Decopatch Glossy Glue

Black permanent marker

What you need to do…

Firstly wash your pebbles well removing any dirt or other bits of the beach you brought back with them. Once washed dry thoroughly.

Now use a brush to cover all pebbles in 2 thin layers of Decopatch glue.

Leave for 20-30 minutes

Next take your black permanent maker and dependent on the particular size of your pebble write an inspiring word. Go over the ink once dried making sure the wording is really bold.

If you’re feeling adventurous, while not add a little symbol by your inspiring word to your pebble a bigger lift.

Important… Use the Decopatch glue before you write on the stone as no matter how long you’ve dried the stone with your wording, Decopatch glue will lift the ink and smudge your design.

Leave lnk to dry and then display.

Here’s some words I added to our pebbles…

Hope you’re feeling inspired.

Remember: When you’re next visiting a beach, always bring some of the beach home with you for crafting!