Home: Sand Shelf Display

A few years ago, I started to collect sand from my travels. I wish I had started the collection sooner, but it just means I need to revisit some places (or have friends get me a little scoop while they are traveling!). My favorite part is when I bring them back home and see the variety of colors that I have all together. It amazes me that two beaches relatively close together will have such different textures and colors.

I store the sand in test tubes and used to keep the collection in a square vase with paper labels. Recently though, one of the tubes cracked and the sand from Cuba leaked all over the bottom of the jar! So I started to research some options.

First I tried storing my sand in some shadowbox frames I found at Michaels. To do this I also had to switch the labels from paper to directly on the glass itself. The aesthetic of the white pen really stood out to me and the labels no longer got tangled on each other. They do however scratch off if rubbed too much.

While I loved how it looked, it took up a lot of space if I were to hang all my sand on walls. I had three frames filled already. I was also worried I wouldn’t be able to get all the same frames in the future as my collection grew. It was also a super tight squeeze in the frames and while I had hot glued the sand tubes in place, the labels scratching on the front glass was still a concern.

I talked to my little brother and he found some neat ones on Etsy. When I mentioned it to my dad, he decided to help make me a set of shelves. Being home for this pandemic certainly gave him the time and when I visited my family for a week, we got to do some of it together.

He bought some wood that was easy to find in case we have to make more. We made a little template and he drilled all the holes for me and made little brackets to hang it on the wall. Then I white washed it so that the warmer sand colors would stand out against the lighter wood.

When I brought the shelves back to my house, I realized that not all the tubes fit perfectly. So after a shattered tube and a few hours of dremeling the holes wider, it all came together.

I ordered some O rings online that fit perfect and held the sand inside the newly enlarged holes. I hung the shelves on the landing on my staircase and rearranged some artwork so a map of the world now sits above it.

I really love how the display came out and am excited to continue expanding my collection as my traveling expands. It was also nice reflecting on all the places I have been fortunate enough to visit over the past few years.

My birthday is coming up and normally I leave town for it. Since I can’t go anywhere this year, I plan on dreaming of some future travels and hitting my goal of 40 countries by the time I am 40!