This is project number 8 in my 12-12-12 Series. This project involves stones and rocks used to form a unique art piece for the home.

I like rocks.

Weird I know, but it’s kind of how I ended up an engineer. I mean I got to take a whole class (2 actually) that studied different types of dirt. We also had classes in other materials, but obviously I like dirt and rocks. I’m always in awe of the history that comes with a simple stone. Just a hunk of matter all connected haphazardly, like with sand stone or in specific structures such as with quartz. Yeah I’m that girl.

As you can probably guess this little interest of mine has from a very young age taken form in collecting rocks. I have quite the collection. Over time I have given a lot away (my siblings tend to share this weirdness) or just tossed them in the yard to be discovered another day, and only kept my favorites. Those deemed good enough to stay are kept in a glass jar or two around the house, which honestly is a pretty terrible way to display some of nature’s most beautiful work if you ask me.

I decided that I wanted to do some kind of display or craft with my rocks pretty soon after we moved in. Nothing like finding things in a move to get the creative juices flowing right?

The thing with displays that I’ve never been a fan of is the dusting, so I decided to go with a shadow box for this project. My adhesive of choice was good old hot glue. This little gun and I have been pretty good friends lately, what with this project and all the wedding projects.

At first I grouped some of my favorites together by color and used these basic groups to create a gradient style design and then glued them in place. For now this piece resides in the guest room, mainly because it’s the only room that’s got any hooks on the walls, but also because I think the red/pink gradient goes really well with the other colors in the room.

I’m happy to have a place to display some of my stones and might just do this with some  of my grey, blue and green stones next.