Seaside in a jar - summer holiday keepsake

Ruby recently made a 'beach in a jar' at school, and it was such a sweet idea, we decided to recreate it again at home.  It's a lovely way to remember a beach holiday, and display shells and stones collected from the shore.

Our first basic one consisted of just sand, shells and stones, but she soon got more adventurous and wanted to create little scenes, so we made a crab and net scene, one with a mermaid and one with a pirate chest full of treasure!  Raid the toybox for small suitable toys, or check out the fish tank section of your pet shop.

Basic supplies you will need are:

• A jam jar with a lid (wide necked ones are better so little hands can get in, but if not, you can move and position items with a spoon handle)
• A handful of sand (collected from the beach or from the sandpit)
• Selection of shells and small stones
• Water and blue food colouring
• Optional additional items - toy fish; creatures; characters; broken jewellery 'treasure'; fruit nets etc

Simply add a small layer of sand to the bottom of a clean, dry jar.

Arrange your seascape items.

Carefully pour in water (we coloured it with a few drops of food colouring first).

Secure lid.

Persuade child that this is not a snow globe, and doesn't benefit from shaking!

Apologies for the scary mermaid and slightly loony looking fish - they were 'essential' - apparently.

This craft featured on the Netmums channel, so do check out the video for more lovely jam jar uses, and see the links below:



My camping matches dry store jar
Red Ted Art's time capsule in a jar; snowglobes; tissue paper lanterns
Zing Zing Tree's glass painted keepsakes
Kids Chaos cookies in a jar