Week 4: Found Object Wall Hanging + Granny Square Collar
Photo Credit: Pinterest
Looking for shells in the ocean has to be one of the most wonderful pass-times I can think of. Especially if they have hermit crabs in them!
In December of 2024 we went to Elizabeth Beach for a week and when we were packing up the car our trunk was a museum of shells squeezed into sandy plastic berry punnets. I may or may not have embarked on a journey to a local nude beach (eyes down of course) to look for shells as the internet promised that any beach called “Shelly Beach” is worth a look-see and it did NOT disappoint! Anyway….
I’m so fond of the sound of the water flowing in and out, jumping on a particularly large shell as the tide tries to pull it back in, hours later your hand reaches into a pocket that is particularly full of sand to remind you of all the treasures you’d shoved in there.
I saw pictures of these awesome shell wall hangings on Pinterest and finally knew what I wanted to do with all the shells I've been collecting since moving to Sydney. An upcoming beach trip with friends was the perfect chance to have a test run at this project, with the power of 6 children and 3 mums, we were certainly guaranteed to make something…. interesting.
While writing this post I momentarily thought about calling myself a "real beach comber" but after I googled it I couldn't get the picture of an old man with a bucket hat, a nose covered in sun cream and a metal detector in his hands out of my head. So I'll just call myself a new word I found while scrolling through google’s suggested searches:
I am a conchologist or a perhaps on the lowest level, a thalassophile.
Conchologist: someone who enjoys collecting shells. Which seems pretty obvious since it has the word "conch" in it.
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Conchologist: someone who enjoys collecting shells. Which seems pretty obvious since it has the word "conch" in it. 〰️
Thalassophile: someone who is fascinated by the ocean and loves being near it.
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Thalassophile: someone who is fascinated by the ocean and loves being near it. 〰️
(Mom, Britt, Dad and whoever else has my number, please tell me if the word scrolling is horrible and I’ll avoid those in the future, thank you!)
Now that we are at the beach house with our friends, IT’S TIME to find some interesting beach objects! Their house is full of really lovely, homey, and carefully curated art that says "beach house" without saying "BEACH HOUSE". It’s full of maps, huge indigenous art full of dots, big shells, etc.
I’d found the perfect drill bit, the right twine; everything tested out well at home…. but then… when we went to the beach with all of our mates, we found zero shells… for three days straight!
My lovely friend Rachael kindly let me run off to the beach with her daughter Charlotte for one last check the day before check out and we hit the mother load!!!
Unfortunately we didn’t have the time to wash them, drill them and assemble them into a wall hanging all in the same day so we did the next best thing.
The kids (and the moms) helped me collect pieces of lightweight, dry driftwood all week so I could make a different project that I’d been dreaming about for years. A driftwood wall hanging that I once saw in a shop in Camas, Washington, USA over 8 years ago.
I wrote the hosts a thank you card, the kids and moms all signed it and we left it behind to say thanks alongside this driftwood wall hanging we all made
Did I mention my teeny drill bit broke and the kids and I got to make a swift trip to Bunnings in the neighboring town 30 minutes away? 😅
I also broke my glass countertop water filter and it cut my big toe open the day we arrived, so I had the pleasure of visiting the local medical center and getting the wound glued together.
This trip was full of memories, and I’m so grateful that we finally got to experience a multi family trip just in time for all of our first borns to experience their first year in kindergarten.
Since we didn’t actually construct a shell “found object” wall hanging, I’m still keeping that brief at the front of my project binder so I can complete it at home. But I did complete a different brief while we were on our trip, I made Matilda and myself some very cute crochet collars.
I showed Charlotte my three color palettes and she chose the pink and yellow one.
