Beach Memory Jar

I recently visited Long Beach Island, NJ with my family and I wanted to preserve some of these memories in an interesting and different way. Being that we do not go to the beach very often, my first impulse was to bring home some sand and go looking for shells. I turned my photos into a mini-album and decided to make a memory jar to keep the album, shells and sand and display them.

Prepping the Sand and Shells
A wise friend told me that it was a good idea to soak shells in a mild bleach solution to sanitize them before displaying them. Given that I would also be displaying them and the sand with an album, I wanted to make sure that there weren't any creepy-crawlies that might decay the paper.

As soon as I got home, I mixed up a mild bleach solution in a bucket and soaked the sand and shells for a few hours. (I'm sure this was overkill, but I was busy doing other things at the time!) The shells air-dried on a few paper towels within minutes, but goshdarnit did the sand give me a hard time! Even after an overnight stay in a cookie tray, the sand was still wet, so I ended up putting it in the oven on the lowest setting (about 175 degrees) for about an hour, checking frequently.

Finally after the "sand setbacks," I arranged the sand and a few shells in a glass terrarium purchased from a local craft store. I also picked up some plastic starfish from the same store. Real ones tend to fall apart and the idea of a dead body in there kinda grossed me out...

Creating the Mini-Album
Using a homemade chipboard album with some metal binding rings, I made a quick mini-album of my photos. When working with such small pages, it is often a good idea to get your images developed as wallets (or 2ups as my store calls them). This way, there are two of each image on a sheet of 4x6 photo paper. The pictures are smaller and fit better, plus you have two of each image to play with!

Since I was creating such a small album, I just bought a mat pad and some stickers from a beach-themed collection and got started. (That's one great thing about mini-albums; you don't need a whole stack!)

Decorating the Lid
I had some tiny corked glass bottles from a craft fair a few summers back, so I decided to write a little "message in a bottle" and hang it from the lid handle. I also used one of the found shells that happened to have a hole in it most likely from a snail invader. Finally, I made a tag with the date and tied each to the handle with hemp.

When tying each object, I wanted them to be tightly attached, but able to dangle. To achieve this, I tied a knot in the string about an inch from the object, then tied the rest of the string tightly around the lid.

Last, but certainly not least...
I placed the mini-album into the sand and displayed the jar proudly in my craft room!

Materials
jar / anchor hocking glass terrarium from michael's
shells / found shells from jersey shore
starfish / nautical fun collection from michael's
paper and embellishments / tim coffey travel collection for k & company