The Good Life : Memory Crafts Made from Beach Treasures You Bring Home

Cool cotton against your skin. The sun glowing beams onto your hair. The soothing sound of seagulls in the distance. Charming boats and fishermen painted in your mind's eye. You want you summer beach escape to last long past the dates you circled on your vacation calendar. You can make it last with these four lovely and easy crafts that are signature mementos of the moments you live for.

Beach Baby Jar

When you are at the beach for your weekend escape, you can savor the fragrance and textures and summer colors by collecting a jar full of memories. Take a beautiful jar and on the bottom first layer some sand. Add a few pieces of driftwood and some pebbles or glittery or shiny rocks that catch your eye. Add a few small seashells. To personalize your memory beach jar add a bottle cap or 2 of the beverage you shared with your friend. If you drank wine, save the cork for the jar. If you went to a night club, you can add a souvenir book of matches, or a cocktail napkin or paper coaster, rolled up. If you saw a movie, add the ticket stub. After you fill your jar with memories, place a fitted lid to seal it and glue some additional shells to the top. Your Beach Baby Jar can be stored near your nightstand to remind you of sweet dreams and your wonderful summer escape.

Magazine Beach Basket

What could be more relaxing than flipping through a stack of your favorite magazines while enjoying the ocean breeze and fresh air with the soothing sounds of waves dancing under sunbeams? It all makes you feel beautiful and at one with the landscape. Creating a Magazine Beach Basket to keep at your bedside for night time reading will remind you of your treasured moments from your blissful vacation. A Magazine Beach Basket is quick and easy to make and will add your personal touch to your bedroom. Take a large oversized wicker basket and paint it white. After the paint dries, simply decorate with sheer white or coral colored ribbons and use a hot glue gun to glue on various small shells and driftwood, dried plants and an eye catching central piece such as a starfish or sand dollar and some netting.

Conch Vanity Flower Dish

Search the beach for the largest most beautiful conch shell you can find. Hold it to your ear and hear the hypnotic sound of the ocean whispering you secrets. If you can't find one, then go ahead and buy one at the local beach tourist shop, it's the next best thing. When you get home, stuff the inside of the conch with soft clay and poke tiny dried flowers into the clay, arranged at different lengths and depths. Now you have a lovely Conch full of flowers you can use to decorate your bathroom vanity area.

Conch Vanity Treasure Dish

As a twist to the Conch Vanity Flower Dish idea, you can instead decorate your beautiful summer beach conch by filling it with soft clay, then gluing small shells to long toothpicks or wooden skewers and poking them inside. To jazz it up even more, you can press in some fake pearls or a string of pink or white pearls. Add a small ribbon or ruffle for a sweet and feminine touch and your Conch Vanity Treasure Dish will truly be a summer memory treasure.

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