Good morning! 😃 Another beautiful, bright morning here in Obar Dheathain and across the North East. ❤️

Here are a couple of hardwood wall plaques, fresh off the workbench this morning. Both have been crafted from a single, lovely piece of weathered timber collected from the beach.

Driftwood is such a pleasure to work with. The sea, wind and weather can give timber a wonderful character over time, creating textures and shapes that would be difficult to replicate by hand. With a little imagination, some careful craftsmanship and a bit of tinkering, something old can be transformed into something beautiful.

But there's a little more to the story of this particular piece.

There's an important difference between natural driftwood, which is part of the coastal environment, and man-made materials that have found their way into our seas. This timber appears to have once been part of something man-made, possibly a boat, and still had traces of paint on it. At some point it seems to have been discarded and ended up in the sea, eventually washing ashore.

The sea may have weathered it and given it character, but it hasn't made it natural. It's still a reminder of the rubbish and discarded materials that find their way into our marine environment.

Rather than simply leaving it to deteriorate or seeing it go to waste, we've been able to rescue it and give it a completely new purpose.

That's something we feel strongly about. Reusing and repurposing materials isn't just about creating attractive things; it's also about recognising the value in what others might consider waste. Every piece of man-made debris we can safely recover and turn into something useful is one less piece of discarded material left on our coastline or in our environment.

We know that crafting a couple of wall plaques won't solve the problem of marine pollution, but every little helps. If we can turn something that shouldn't be there into something that someone will treasure, then that's a worthwhile result in our eyes. 🌊❤️