I started a sandcastle collection.  On my beach walks this summer, I have stopped to take photos of sandcastles abandoned by their builders, left for passers-by to admire and the surf to eventually reclaim.  Here’s a few of my treasures.

Yesterday I also caught a few sand mounds that seem to be a variation on the castle theme.  They weren’t fancy or decorated, but each included a canal from the top down to the bottom extending some distance away from the mound toward the water’s edge.

I’ve seen people of all ages building sandcastles.  Kids build them in groups, teenagers build them with their friends, and adults build them–with or without their kids helping out.  Some people use elaborate equipment: shovels and pails and molds.  Some decorate their castles with shells and rocks and driftwood pieces.  Some use the dribble effect, others are smooth leaving the imprint of the buckets packed with sand.

The picture I didn’t capture was the one of the three or four year old, outfitted in his tiny life vest and swim trunks, picking up handfuls of squishy sand and dribbling it onto a castle already substantially built.  He was the image of #carefree…totally immersed in his world of sandcastle building.

This has been a summer of digital making for me–photographs and blogging and all the art and craft that goes into building, editing, and posting them.  But I haven’t taken the time to build a sandcastle of my own.  Maybe I will on my next trip to the beach…and I’ll take a few pictures to collect that one too!