You can body surf, play a little paddleball, or you can take the concept of Do-It-Yourself to the beach and make one epic sandcastle.
Yet, my favorite thing to do on a beach day is to take long walks with someone else. The ocean is so beautiful, sublime, and calming that it’s really easy to have an intimate conversation with another person.
It also gives you a great excuse to gather cool items that wash up on the shore like shells, sand dollars, and driftwood — which one women used to make a beautiful centerpiece.
Which leads me to a question — what do you do once you have all these random treasures from the sea? You can’t always make centerpieces with them. What else can be done?
Instructables user creativesocialworker had a brilliant idea.
Her solution? It’s a brilliant gift that I’d love to receive…
“Over the last 18 years [my sister and I] have spent countless hours scouring the beach and climbing cliffs to collect sea glass and I finally found a good way to display it,” she wrote. Here are some of their collection:
So she decided to begin a project she could give to her sister as a Christmas present. “I can’t wait for her to see it!” she said. First thing she had to do, though, was gather her materials, which included her found sea pieces, tile adhesive grout, sealant, tiling sponge, tile trowel, and a grout bag.
Then she cleaned and dried her sea materials thoroughly before she used them. “My favorite way is to soak the pieces in denture cleaner,” she said. “You could also wipe them with rubbing alcohol or soak them in a soapy-solution.”
Next, she tiled the rim of her tabletop.
She laid tile adhesive on the tabletop next. “My preferred method is to fill a grout bag with the adhesive and squeeze it onto the table because it gives you more control over the location and depth of the glue,” she said.
Once a section of glue was laid down and sticky, she added her sea pieces to her tabletop.
She also did a rectangular table as well, just for a little variety.
Then she applied grout to the table by smoothing it between the pieces of the mosaic and let it sit for 15 minutes.
Once the grout had set for 15 minutes, she began to clean it off. When it was clean, she let it dry overnight.
The end result of her rectangular table ended up looking like this.
But the real stunner — her circular table she was planning to give her sister as a gift — came out beautifully.
“This project is time consuming but makes an amazing and personal gift,” she said proudly.
