Friday, August 17, 2012

Displaying Nature's Treasures

In the online class, Ode to Nature, this week's lesson is about "The Art of Collecting."  Alisa Burke has us collecting treasures and then arranging, displaying and photographing them. She shared a little about this on her blog in this post.  Earlier this week, I went out to do some beach combing and then created these displays.
A basket full of drift wood, crab shells and other beach goodies.
Two small glass bowls filled with sea shells - taken from two different angles. And, my favorite:
Feathers in a tall shot glass!
This exercise was fun on many levels.  First, I really needed to get out to the beach and spend time there away from my responsibilities here at home.  I took some great photographs which I will share later. I also enjoyed spending time working on my still life photography skills.  Finally, it just makes me really happy to see these little displays around my living room. 
I'm sure I'll be using these collections for some other art work - sketching and more photography for sure.  I also hope to spend some time in the garden, fields, and forests doing more collecting.
Do you have a favorite among these photos? Do you display any of nature's treasures in your home?

15 comments:

Missus Wookie said...

I have collections like this that I pick up during wanderings, some I display for only a short time (like your feathers or some flowers) others I keep and bring back out yearly. Not put my summer displays out this year - but usually have them out on my decor shelves and combine them with candles.

a friend has little jars of shells and sand from foreign beaches she's been too in her bathroom - all labelled Great fun to browse through as you wash your hands!

Mary B said...

They look lovely Rinda and yes I like the feather in that slender vase too

helena said...

what a great idea for a creative project - love the featehrs int eh glass

Amy said...

Why yes I do. I have a small round fish bowl that is filled with shells and I have another glass vase that holds smooth pebbles, I really like them as decoration as they bring an earthiness into our home without being too over the top.

Sian said...

Nature's treasures in that I dug them up from the garden but they are manmade! I have a tray full of pieces of Victorian pottery left behind when the land our house is built on belonged to a grand old house

scrappyjacky said...

Like Sian...we have some manmade treasures dug up in the garden....original old beer bottles that are from Hastings Brewery.
I do also have baskets of shells and pebbles from the beach....and fir cones,acorns etc from the park.
In the garden I have some very large stones that probably should never have left the beach.

debs14 said...

My favourite is the glass bowl with the sand dollars on show. I'm sure that collecting them was a lovely relaxing way to spend a day.

Irene said...

I have some sea shells in a glass container surrounding a cande. Love the picture of the feathers. Very clever use of the shot glass.

Elizabeth said...

Apparently, American Indians must have camped on our grounds at sometime. We've found arrow heads, stone hatchet heads, and also some round stones about the size of marbles. We donated them to a local American Indian museum.

Beverly said...

Photo 3 with the sand dollars in front is my favorite of these. Funny how so many of us have beach finds on display. Our bedroom has a beach theme (well, will shortly when we have finished redoing it). We have shells from many places and small bottles that hold sand from different beaches, I love the differences in sand and it's so easy to bring back a little for a bottle.

JO SOWERBY said...

loving the displays maria. i have a collection of shells and some fir cones collected from foreign climbs. i am off to take pictures for scavenger hunt 2012,
Jo xxx

Lizzie said...

Nice little collections, Rinda - and I love the sand dollars.
I had a mini-collection of shells on my bedroom windowsill, but just now they are put away, so I can leave the window open without them blowing away (they were in a lovely hand-made ceramic dish, which blew down and broke...).
They will be back there soon!
When I was at Mariann's studio in January, I loved to look at her collection of feathers - she had a whole lot of them, all grouped together and it looked fabulous!

Alison said...

I think I like the little glass bowl best
Alison xx

Jennifer Grace said...

Ooh, gorgeous photos, and a great collection of bits - your beaches have much more interesting stuff to collect than ours. Here we'd just get a few small shells and some rubbish!

I like the third photo the best, I like the angle of the glass bowl, as you can see the contrast of the smooth glass against the textured shells. x

Anonymous said...

I really like those bowls of seashells, especially the first one. As for displaying something from nature - we have a big piece of driftwood that I collected back when I was a teen. I really need to display it better, right now it sits on a shelf part way up the stairs.