An arenophile with a band saw

It all started with this image from a magazine so many years ago. Small bottles of sand from around the world displayed in a single row on a small shelf. Instantly in love with the idea. I remember saying to myself ... why haven't I been doing that all of my life with all the great beaches I have visited. But then I forgot about collecting sand until a couple of years ago and that image popped back in my head. 

I don't have a spot in my house for a long, single shelf, nor do I have enough bottles of sand/dirt yet. Using this little cabinet I bought many years ago as a model, I made myself a larger version to hold the taller bottles that Tara found for the sand collection. (Thank you, Tara). At first I was just using old, odd bottles, but wanted something uniform. I used the band saw, odd pieces of molding and wood around the garage. I finally finished painting/distressing it tonight. I would call it cutely quirky in the fact that it is a little "off", meaning one shelf is about 1/4 inch unlevel. But, hey, it is my first effort. And even better, I finished something this week! I am so in love with my collection all ready! Tara brought some from a couple of her trips. I have been asking all my friends going on vacation to bring me back a snack baggie of dirt or sand.

 

 

More wonderful sand collections, A Sand Collector is called an ARENOPHILE, did you know it? Egg2Cake has a wonderful display of sand. 

A great website called "sand collection" by Daniel Helbers. He documents and maps his collection. Impressive! Below, 300 samples of sand from his site. Cool!

Mark + Kim Pinkerton on Flickr have a great collection on just the shelves I would love to have.

Adam Hally has a great collection. As well as some great close up photos of the sand collection.

 

This is a great New York Times piece about Dr. Holman and his collection found via Completely Coastal's nice blog post about sand collections. (Wouldn't you love his collection!) Is that color-coded? ;)

Bakerella has a great collection from all over the world.

 

Would love to visit A Museum with Sands. Photos of grains of sand. For me, the variations, colors, the different grains is almost mesmerizing. I love it. I just wish I had been collecting my entire life. A collection of scans of the variety of colors from different countries at Science Art. The international meeting place for sand collectors at arenophile.com.

Through the Sandglass is such an interesting site.

Maybe I should make it official and join the The International Sand Collectors Society, discovering the world grain by grain. Isn't that cool??? Or the Sand Collecting group on Flickr.

So some day, I might have enough vials of sand and a wall space for something grand like this, a collection of over 8,000 samples by Marco Bonifazi.