☆ Collections, Sea Urchins and Beautiful Memories

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From the end of February I am moving! 

Unfortunately I will no longer post here but can be found here instead.

 I hope that you will continue to join me over on my new LilliBean Designs blog.

I has dawned on me over the last ten years that I am a collector. 

I collect shit. A lot of shit.

Not in a hoardy kinda way - I mean I don't have 34 vegetable peelers, 10 foot massagers, or stacks of newspapers in the hallways. But I have my collections.

The things I typically collect include really nice writing pens, cute notebooks, (keep me outta the stationery departments!), feathers, glass bottles, books, hearts, dream catchers and sea shells. 

And my very favourite sea shell to collect are sea urchins.

 

I collect them whole or broken. With spines or not, or even just the spines. 

I love their colours, their roughness combined with the beautiful round shape. 

So you may have seen on instragram over the weekend this photo.

I rediscovered these late last year when I moved my studio space upstairs. And they have been sitting on my desk, precariously stacked on an ice cream bucket (full of rocks by the way!) They have been taunting me. 

What could I do with them? I wanted to see them every day because of the beautiful memory they evoked, and because they are just lovely.

But I didn't want to stick them in a jar and put them on a shelf. (I have a huge jars already filled with shells around the house!) So I left them.

And almost daily I would worry that they'd fall off and break, that I would knock them. That the kids would come in an want to touch them.

So anyway this weekend we were cleaning out our garage (again!) and I found a heap of ikea frames that I had been saving for projects + realised that one of these shadow boxes would be absolutely perfect for my urchins.

How awesome does that look??

And every time I see this I am instantly reminded of that beach on that small greek island (that I can't remember the name of now unless I dig through my journals) where Mac and I spent a couple of hours collecting sea urchins while we were waiting for the ferry to Santorini. The smell of the ocean, keen eyes searching + the smell of the oregano container we bought to carry these shells home.

Is it a terrible shock to learn that my kids have become collectors too? I did't think so.

Bug has a rock + feather collection that is threatening to overtake my shelves + Bean collects anything that will help her in her art projects - like toilet rolls, leaves, string, confetti, sticks.... OMG.

I wonder if any of you have collections around in boxes, in cupboards that are attached to special memories? (Please, PLEASE let me know what you collect!!) And I wonder if you have thought about bringing these collections into the every day? 

P.S if you enjoy reading my blog, please make sure you change your subscription links as from March 1st I will only be posting over here.

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