Sand Art (Valentines Day)

Here is the finished product first. It will hang up nicely on the wall as soon as I mount the brackets. The wife loved it. I did this for Valentines day with sand from our favorite beach here on Oahu. It can be used to make any type of memento from the beach or kids handprints/footprints, initials, whatever you draw in the sand on the beach you can save forever. My wife even put a step by step on her blog about it (http://wildfairytale.com/)

I made a small box out of an old pallet.

I trimmed the lining so it only covered the bottom. I didn't take a picture of it but i nailed in about 20 to 30 small nails on the bottom so the sand would have something to grip onto when I hung it on the wall.

I first poured the sand in the box to measure how much I would need and then dumped it all into the bucket with craft glue. (The kids jelped me get the sand so they could be a part of the project.)

I didn't know how much glue to add so I would keep adding it in until all the sand was coated after mixing. I think I used 6 bottles of white glue.

I made sure it had the consistency of peanut butter so that I could shape it. Add glue/sand as necessary.

I poured the mixture into the box and spread it out evenly over the bottom. If you look closely in this step you can see the nails I put in so the sand would hold onto the background.

I smoothed the whole mixture out with a Spackle to give me a fresh writing surface.

After I smoothed it all out I wrote our initials and inside a heart and let it sit out around 48 hours to cure and dry. You could probably bake it to dry faster but I don't know if it will shrink and crack.