Displaying Collections of Small Rocks

Since our childhoods, my husband and I have loved collecting rocks.  Both of us had grandparents who also collected rocks, and helped us start some collections.  In this post, I'm presenting some practical ways you can display groups of small rocks together besides having them stored so you can't see them or stung out everywhere.

IN BOWLS 

In this bowl, I keep my childhood rocks.  As a kid I would always pick up rocks I liked off the dirt road where we lived (the little salmon colored rock).  In the middle, you will see the Caveman Kit Kat Bar given to me a la my friends who lived down the road, and the Caveman Toe Print on the right.  (Funny things we kids saw in these rocks).  When I was 10 my grandparents took me on a road trip to the west coast.  The white round rock is from the Columbia River Basin, as well as the volcanic rock.

In college, Tyler took a Geology field trip where he found a bunch of Calcite.  So for the past 5 years, it has been sitting in a Braums bag.  I finally got tired of the Braums bag and found a large fish bowl that we had left over from wedding centerpieces.   I used decorative grass to soften the bottom and placed all his calcite in the bowl.  Now it sits on his bookshelf where it can actually be seen!

In a meaningful bowl.  These rocks are all rocks we picked up from hiking while we were on our honeymoon in New Mexico.  How appropriate that I found one in a heart shape?!   While we were there, we bought this bowl from Mama's Minerals in Santa Fe for the purpose of  holding our honeymoon rocks, so now the bowl is also part of the keepsake - not to mention it is an awesome bowl!

AS VASE FILLER
We collected several Rose Rocks one afternoon last year.  Red dirt rose rocks mainly form just near our college town in Norman, Oklahoma so they're particularly easy to find.  Since we have so many around the house, I put some of them as filler for this vase.  The red looks great with the colors in the pine pebble flowers (that I sell on Etsy).

IN SMALL CONTAINERS
These are little fossils that Tyler got for his birthday from his grandparents - which are even more neat because they found them on their first rock hunting trip together.  We were having trouble finding a place to show them off since they're so tiny.   For Christmas, we got this snow globe that is made with the intention of putting a picture in.  It has a magnifying effect, so it works nicely for these little cuties.

Don't forget to check back next week!  I'll have a continuation on this post detailing how we use rocks in our everyday decorations! What other ways have you seen collections of small rocks grouped for display? \