our beach souveneir

Our beach trip was cut short due to the lovely weather we were having... cold, windy and rainy does NOT a beach trip make. We were able to gather some good craft materials though, and we are busily combining a few different craft projects I've seen around the blogosphere to create paperweights. I'm sorry - when I saw the ideas, I wasn't intending to blog about them so I just noted the idea - I didnt keep a reference so I can't send you back to them! If I'm using one of your ideas, please let me know and I'll add a link!

Anyway, first we had to clean the sand off of all of the shells and rocks we collected...


Then we painted the insides of the shells... the boys get sooo intense when they are doing one of their "projects" -- its probably the only quiet time I get around here :)



Then we heated up the rocks and melted crayons on them. I love how they turned out, and the boys were totally into it. I was a lil scared to do this since the rocks were hot, but i put mittens on them and they were fine. We were all fascinated with how quickly the crayon melted and how it pooled around the rocks - we literally colored them until they were too cold to do any more. Not wanting to tempt fate and burned fingers, I didn't get any pictures of the process but they came out well, no?




So today we made our souveneirs... I gave the boys each the shells that they painted and half of the rocks that we decorated to use in their mosaics. I mixed up some plaster of paris (3c. plaster, 1 1/2 c. water) and let sit about 5 min. I poured it into a plastic plate (its what I had on hand) and let the boys add their finds. (PS - You can totally see their personalities come out in this project... I don't even have to label who's whose... if you get to know us, you'll know what I mean...). For future reference: You don't have to overfill the plates - I made way too much plaster mix. And, 2 year olds REALLY like to push stuff way down - great for a texture activity, not so great for keeping things neat. And, since we had a lot of sand left in the bag that we collected their treasures, we sprinkled sand over the top it all... and voila, beach treasure paperweights! :)



I was a little worried that they wouldn't come out of the plates, especially Jumps - but they easily popped right out. ;) I think they came out awesome!
(Jumps' is on the left, Monkey's on the right)


We're going to give one to Grandpa C who requested a shell from Monkey and a rock from Jumps while we were at the shore, and the other will go to Grandma B for her birthday this weekend. I LOVE kid-made presents!