Rocks & Pebbles

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Not necessarily a post about crystals, you can post about them too if you have a collection, but today I would like to draw attention to the humble pebble 

Do you have a special pebble you found on a lucky walk? Maybe more than one? An entire collection? Are you a rockhound? A beachcomber like me? What do you do with your rocks, pebbles and crystals? How do you organize them? Do you paint your rocks? Do they help decorate something else?

I like long walks on the beach and looking for shells*, not rocks, but from time to time I'll pick up some interesting pebbles. My favourite is a simple oval one that just feels nice and smooth on my palm. I've considered painting it, but I'm worried it would affect its texture. Beach pebbles always look their best when wet, but I don't wet my pebbles too often.

*For those concerned about unethical beachcombing: there's no shells of endangered or "marketable" species in the beaches I live by, or at least I never came across any. I also don't overdo it when picking shells: I specifically target ones with holes in them, and rarely if ever end up with more than a handful per walk. I also return shells back to the beach if I end up with too many, and pick up trash along my way! I've only found trash worth keeping once, a lost "phone cord" bracelet floating by the shore.

[grubbyfox]

I was nuts about collecting stones and pebbles as a kid. Would have my pockets filled with big chunks of asphalt, rocks, pebbles, stones, etc. Idk it was def not normal, lol but I stopped. I would sometimes keep a piece of pebbel or twig though, if I found one that was exceptionally good when playing hopskotch and such. It needed to be kinda flat, but not too "skippy", so it needed a bit of edge to stop from rolling or skipping etc. It was a whole thing.

I do collect one if I find a cute one, and I also collect like broken, sanded down, glass at the beach (veryyyy rare to find), or maybe a shell or similar (the empty, clean picked ones. we dont really have those critters that uh swap shells or whatever?) We dont have that many shell types here tho, and I dont dont like to collect double of these, so if I have a nice one, I leave whatever I find. I dont like to hoarde natural resources, lmao.

My fave "pebble" tho to collect, is hardened slag. lol. I live in an industrial town where they use uhhh, like the spillover/foam/idk of molten slag?? or something?, to let it solidify and then use as filler around where they'd normally use pebbles/rocks/whatever. I cannot with english today it seems, sorry, hahaha. They have a really nice smooth surface, like glass, and are often in different colors, like black and torquise striped etc. They look absolutely gorgeous. I sometimes see tourists pick em up if they find them (you kinda gotta know where to look lol even if they are everywhere).

We also have a lof of rocks with "mica" (??) or whatever type of glittering/shimmer in rocks. Which makes for nice trinkets... but as someone who doesnt want to spend a fortune on safe rocks for aquariums, it sucks hahaha.