Thursday, August 27, 2009

What I Did On My Summer Vacation.

While we spent half the summer here in Los Angeles - doing those L.A. summer things (beach, camp, beach, swimming lessons, beach), we spent the other half at the cottage up in British Columbia.

Our favourite activity is always beachcombing - and the beaches of "our island" are ripe for this sort of thing. As we continued to collect rocks, driftwood and shells we pondered what we would do with it all. We started with jewellery. And windchimes. Then settled on mobiles.

selection

The challenge of balance and movement added to the activity. And I am quite pleased with how they turned out.

process

The process wasn't complicated. We drilled holes in the wood, and shells at the positions we wanted things to hang. (The big kid loved this.) We then tied hemp twine onto the wood, hung the piece from a hook, and worked attaching shells to obtain the desired weight distribution for the mobile to work. We needed some extra weight on one side so added a rock, wrapping it in twine to attach. Balance and Motion. (Ahh! Science!)

the mobile we made

We liked it so much, we made another to bring back to Cali - a reminder of wonderful summer days gone by, but not forgotten!

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