Arty Activities at the Beach

The seaside is a wonderful place for creative activities of all kinds, whether it be games, imaginary play or art. My own favourite activity is scavenging – I find it a physical impossibility to go for a walk along the beach without coming home with a collection of stones, shells, sea-glass and driftwood. All beautiful and inspiring materials that I can’t resist, and always think I will create something with. The collection grows ever larger now we live close by and the opportunities for collecting are greater!

I first wrote about Beach Art a few years ago, including various ideas for artistic activities, but my younger son has now developed his own creative beach activity which he calls ‘Magic Sand Art’. Astonishingly simple we had lots of fun with it, and I hadn’t come across it before, so I thought I’d share it with you.

First, assemble your tools – all you need for this is dry sand, water, a stick (though you can just use your finger) and something to use as a canvas. The beach close to us, although mainly sandy, has lots of black stones – some of which are large and flat – perfect for painting on I thought. There are also quite a few rocky outcrops which also have flat faces which make good canvases too.

Depending upon the location of your canvas, it can also be helpful to have a bucket to put either dry sand, or seawater in.

Use the stick to draw your design onto your rock – you need to work quickly so it doesn’t dry!

Sprinkle your design with dry sand straight away (or if you are using a stone you can place it face down in dry sand instead).

Blow or shake any loose sand away – et voila – you have your very own ‘Magic Sand Art’, which lasts a surprisingly long time before it falls off.

And finally, in case you missed it on our Facebook page, I thought I’d share an image of some of the fantastic Anamorphic Sand Art created at our local beach recently: