beach treasure mosaic mirrors

My sister Tressa and her boyfriend just recently moved home and the kids and I wanted to make a gift to take to their house warming party. Tressa loves the sea so we decided to make something using some of our collected beach treasures..

I thought we could make some mirrors with a mosaic border. I found these small round beveled edge mirrors cunningly disguised as candle plates for a £1 each! Exactly what I had in mind, don’t you love it when that happens!



The mirrors are about 4" diameter. I cut two 6" squares from 3mm plywood we have lying around. I then fixed the mirrors in the center using dual purpose tile adhesive/grout. I made sure to scrape off any excess around the edge. Ideally they should have been left to dry overnight at this stage but we were making them the morning of the party so I just left them for a couple of hours to dry.



I then got Oliver and Cyan to come and design their mosaic borders, using shells and sea glass from our collection. I also have some little tumbled glass mosaic tiles and they used a few of those too.



I was originally going to let the kids stick the pieces on, but I had a few concerns about this. I was not sure about the tile adhesive/grout on their hands as it’s not very skin friendly. Time was also an issue and I suspected it would be quicker to get them to work out their layout and then I would fix them after. I am so glad we did it this way, it is quite fiddly fixing the pieces on. I took photos of their layouts to refer to when I was sticking everything down:



Cyan’s design



Oliver’s design



I spread a fairly thick layer of tile adhesive/grout around the borders, working on a small area at a time, about half of one edge, to stop the adhesive drying too quickly.

Next time I make these (I am planning to make more for birthday gifts this year) I will make sure that the grout is up to the edges of the mirror at this stage. I didn’t – if you enlarge the above photo you can see there are gaps around the edge of the mirror. This meant I had to wait for it to dry and then go round and fill in those gaps which was a real pain, I discovered you can’t use the usual grouting method with these uneven objects!



Cyan’s mirror all finished



Oliver’s mirror all finished

Once they were all fixed and dry I painted round the edge of the plywood bases with white emulsion paint to tidy up the edges, I had scraped off excess grout around the edges when I was fixing the pieces on.

They turned out so pretty and Tressa loved them. I love both the kids’ designs – they are different but complimentary. Oliver was very proud of his symmetrical design and Cyan incorporated a little symmetry after Oliver explained symmetry to her, I love her combination of randomness with a little symmetry!

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mini notebooks ~ fun in the sun crafty ribbons

I made these little notebooks for my second part of the Crafty Ribbons Fun in the Sun challenge, using various Fun in the Sun ribbons along with some other ribbons from my stash to cover the fronts of these little notebooks. I was going to make a couple of different ones.. I got a bit carried away working out cute ribbon combos and ended up making five!









The first was made to match the mini beach bag I made..





I made these books from mixed pastel coloured printer paper, with covers from offcuts of cardstock. I stitched them on my sewing machine to bind them. I also ran the inner pages through the machine with no thread first – to perforate the sheets – this means pages can be torn out if required. My inspiration for these notebooks came from Camille over at the Mother*Lode who made some cute little books for her kids to doodle in.



As an afterthought I added some really cute little 3D sticker embellishments and little puffy gingham hearts from my stash, which coordinated perfectly with all the ribbons. I used Mod Podge to stick the ribbons and embellishments, on reflection it was maybe not the best thing to stick the ribbons, but I just bought it recently and have been dying to try it out on something!

Oliver has been drooling over these today as I was finishing them off – so I have promised to make up some more for him and Cyan in a larger size which they can use for doodle pads.. Oliver’s favourite is (predictably) the goldfish version, I can't decide which is my favourite – they all turned out so cute!

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mini beach bag ~ fun in the sun crafty ribbons

I made this mini beach bag for the Crafty Ribbons Fun in the Sun challenge. I used turquoise and white gingham for the main part of the bag and a multi-colour pastel plaid cotton for the front pocket – it is trimmed with one of the Fun in the Sun ribbons which has beachy things on it. I used blue deckchair stripe grosgrain ribbon for handles, which I bought from their fabulous site craftyribbons.com – my new favourite source for ribbons.



This bag is gusseted (I have been wanting to try out a gusseted bag) and lined with the gingham. It is interfaced for strength and stability. I used the same method of double-folding and double-stitching the top hem and handles as for the party bags I make – this makes them really strong and durable.







Here is the selection of Fun in the Sun ribbons I received for the challenge:



I used some shells from my beach treasures for props!

Now I'm off to finish my other projects for the challenge..

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a hoard of beach treasures

It’s been a very busy week, one way and another.. I did find time to wash and sort our stash of treasures which have been collected over several days out to various local beaches so far this year. The creamy/white ones on the left above my Mum collected from a Spanish beach on her holidays, some with perfect round holes! They all looked so pretty laid out to dry in the beautiful sunshine.

Some of these were collected when we went to the Pirate weekend at Mount Edgcumbe recently, most of these have come from Mount Edgcumbe, which has a couple of little pebbly beaches which are full of shells and sea glass. My kids have inherited (or learnt?!) my love (obsession!) of beach combing, every time we visit a beach we come back with another load of treasure!



Some of these treasures (heart shaped stones, large sea glass pieces) I have specific purposes in mind for (look out for future projects coming soon), the tiny shells will go into my tiny shell collection jars, and I have promised the kids a jar each to fill with their favourite treasures to keep in their rooms. The rest will get organised into more jars (part of my new getting organised craftiness!) and sit around looking pretty until I have a purpose for them!



Do you love finding treasure from the sea too?

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