Sand, Rock, Seashell, and Debris IDEA

Several years ago, I saw a picture in a Martha Stewart magazine of a mantle with a bunch of little bottles on it and in the bottles were sandm seashells, rocks, coral fossils, tiny drift wood, and such. I thought they were so cute, as I'm absolutely obsessed with every single one of those things anyway.  The article said that when the family went on a vacation, they would always find something on the beach to bring home and add to a little bottle for their collection. I was so happy that there was something useful to do with MY collection of stuff I'd been obsessively collecting for years.  I showed the article to my sister, Vannoy, she was also excited about it. You see, Vannoy, mama, and I have been on a lot of cruises and road trips and have brought back little pieces of the differect countries, states, and parks that we've visited. Vannoy and I went to Hobby Lobby and found these little packs of plastic bottles. There are nine in a pack for $2.97; we bought several packs of these bottles apiece and brought them home and set about filling them up.

Bottles of sand, seashells, rocks, and
coral fossils from vacations

I didn't want labels on the front of my bottles because it would cover up part of the collection and, so I wrote the name on top of the lid. I put the bottles in front of my TV so I could look at them while I watched TV. I love those bottles and looking at them always makes me so happy. It's visually appealing, as all the little bottles match and they're lined up so perfect. It's amazing because the sand in each bottle is completely different. They range in texture from fine powder to course tiny pebbles, and the color ranges from almost white to light brown. How can there be such completely different sand on every beach.  Since they're all connected to the same body of water, it seems like they would at least match. Perhaps I sould whoop out my Geology books and read them again. It has been awhile since I took those courses.

Okay, I wasn't going to say this because I'm sure it's obsessive behavior, but it worked so well. I had to put labels on my bottles to remind me where I was when I got the contents of each bottle, but I didn't want to SEE the labels, so they had to be transparent. After way too much thinking, I developed a plan of action. I wanted to write on top of the bottles because I didn't actually want to see the labels when I looked at the bottles, and the sides of the bottles had to be visually appealing or it would have driven me smack-dab nuts. I knew that permanent marker would come off after it's been touched several times, and I couldn't take that chance, as I wouldn't have known where the contents came from if the words came off. So here's what I did, I put a piece of clear tape on top of the bottle, of course it was perfectly lined up where the little tab that stuck off the side of the lid was at the back becasue I didn't want to see that either. I wrote the country, beach, resort name, lodge, month and year (whichever one was appropriate for the trip) on top of the tape. Then I put a piece of clear tape on top of that. Now I don't ever have to worry about the label getting smudged, seeing the little tab on the lid, or SEEING a white label because they're clear, AND on top of the bottle. So pretty.