Monday, February 15, 2010

3D memory keeping

Ashley and I have collected and given each other some strange things over the years. I once topped a present for him with a dried up frog I found stuck to the side of a pool while on a shoot upstate. In return, he carried a couple of lizards back from Florida after a visit to his mom's. We both appreciate creatures in all their forms and I thought for this Valentine's Day, I would clean up our small collection and showcase it a little better. I used a set of discontinued Martha Stewart shadow boxes so they could be properly displayed. Along with the dried frogs and lizards, I glued the best of all the insects we've acquired into a different box.

We also like the more traditional collecting of shells and stones, driftwood and coral fragments, sea glass and bits of worn rubbish that can be found along the beach. Two trips to the Bahamas have accumulated into a big box of ocean odds and ends. After organizing it all, I laid out a specimen box full of all the little things we collected from the sea. I love looking at it all in rows on the pale blue linen. There is so much white, bleached from the sun, yet hints of every color, some natural and some completely synthetic. The ombre of sea glass, the line of snail shells, the plastic army figurine, the ceramic A (for Ashley) that I happened to score washed up in the sand and the fuchsia color of coral that adheres to almost anything—all together under glass, closed in a box forever. The warm memories of a summer trip are safe.

Happy Valentine's Ash and 8th anniversary too.

8 comments:

  1. I LoVe the bugs! my sister collects dead bugs as well great ideas for mounting them.

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  2. Great ideas and terrific use of the shadow boxes. Didn't realize they'd been discontinued - bummer, I always liked them.

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  3. I used Beacon 527 multi-purpose glue. It is a great glue for holding almost anything!

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  4. good job kris! looks fantastic! what a nice valentines day you had:) kisses.

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  5. Greg used to be a biologist a few years into our sweetheart life. This box of yours brought back some of those memories!! Floods of them actually...it brought a post Valentine's Day smile to my face. Thanks Kris!! I used to dress in a headlamp and unisex boots, collecting salamanders in the dark of night...in the woods, in the Blue Ridge Mountains for somebody's thesis work....OK, well I liked the woods and the mountains and it always was a welcomed getaway with my favorite person....
    The added bonus was a diner breakfast on Sunday mornings...mmmm, eggs....and coffee...and home baked sticky sweet everything. Diner coffee tastes really good after being up all night chasing salamanders around in the dark! ;)
    Lynne

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  6. I LOVE the beach in a box:) Awesome job. I also love that your boyfriend's name is Ashley. That's my husband's name and the questions about his name are annoying.

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  7. Oh, I see a girl after my own heart. I love keeping and pinning old skeletons, insects etc in shadow boxes. I remember as a child one of my favorite things on my desk (besides my commodore 64) was the bleached skull of an old opossum I had found. I wonder where that ended up, as I keep everything!

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