Shells In Candlelight

I do a lot of crafts and art things so I have a lot of "stuff" laying around. Sometimes I just gather up the stuff and do photo shoots. I love the look of candlelight.

Treasure

This is treasure from my Mendocino trip - shells, and sea glass. No jewels and gold in my treasure chest (although that would be really useful). I love shells, rocks, bits of driftwood or anything that calls to me. With an entire beach to choose from these must have been very special. I like them for their colors, or shapes. All of the shells are broken but that just adds to their character.

I might make jewelry from some of them. If I spray them with a sealer that will bring out all the lovely colors on them that are more vibrant when they're wet. The almost transparent piece of sea glass in the near center is frosted and translucent white when dry (these are all sitting in a bowl of water for the photo).



 The shell at the very top, slightly left of center has bands of yellow, silverish pearl, and very dark brown, black or blue. Such beautiful, rich colors!

Yeah, this one! Not a very good picture. Maybe I'll take a better one over the weekend.




 This one looks like a bird beak!

 

This one has some beautiful colors as well and is floating around in my brain trying to figure out how to be a necklace.

I believe these are pieces of milk glass.

People used to throw their dishware in the dump (hopefully only the broken pieces). Milk glass used to be much more common than it is now. I remember my grandmother had a milk glass pitcher and a hobnail glass bowl when I was a kid. I only see these in antique stores and thrift stores now.

So, these are the treasures I brought back from my trip. For now they're residing on my fireplace mantle along with all the other bits of things I pick up here and there.

Gumby & Pokey at The Beach

Wow, they have BIG seashells on this beach Gumby and Pokey found!

This was one of the set ups I tried with my fake beach that didn't work out. I was trying to make this look like the sea shore. There is water there at the bottom but it doesn't look like it. I probably should have put something blue or dark under the plastic to give it some color. But anyway, you can see what the basic set up was for the fake beach from this photo - folding table in the back yard, painter tarps and a couple of bags of sand box sand from Home Depot.

I believe this was the concept shot that started the whole beach idea. I wanted t shoot Gumby and Pokey at the beach, but didn't want to drive all the way down there to do it. I should play around with Photoshopping in a horizon and a shore line.