Glittering Shards: Oh I DO like to be beside the seaside

Picked from our friends garden on holiday and made into crumble (yum!)

Back from our week at the sea. I needed more faith - the wellies and mack's were unnecessary - we had warmth and sun almost every day. And, oh how lovely it was to be by the sea again. The sea is in my soul from childhood having a week of the smells, sounds and feel of sand and sea has been blissful.

As soon as I hit the beach, my search for beautiful pebbles began - it is so instinctive, I have been doing this for years and years. Examining stones for the shades in colour that are so easy to disregard because they are 'just pebbles'. Several years ago I brought 11 kilos of pebbles back from a Greek Island - mad I know - but there were white ones, grey ones, sand ones and then those that were tinged with green, pink, purple. I made an amazing garden table from them, unfortunately without the level of technical knowledge that I have now so it only lasted a few years.

The mosaic itch didn't leave me this week either - I thought it would be nice to make our friends, the Sandersons, a thank you mosaic for letting us use their house, with pebbles from the beach (and an old paving slab I found at the bottom of their garden!).

Here it is, and a few holiday snaps: