How To Create A Spectacular Sandcastle

We love spending a day at the beach. We also love a good design project. Combining our two loves, sandcastle building is a favorite pastime that feeds our creativity—but also requires a certain level of precision. To help us create the ultimate sand sculpture during our next beach outing, we asked the experts at Sarasota-based Team Sandtastic to share some tips with us; here are their recommendations:

• Plan out your sculpture in advance and have artwork of what you’ll be carving available for reference.
• Pack your sand really hard (see the process information on the Team Santastic website for details about how we do this).
• Spend about the first 1/3 of your time shoveling and compacting your sand.
• For your theme, try to tell or convey a whole story in your one pose, like a one-panel comic strip.
• Combine many different icons into a collage instead of having one large element (for example, carve a reef theme instead of a single fish).
• Bring the right tools. Everything you need can be found in your garage or kitchen: a 2-foot segment of a 2 x 4 to be used as a tamper, a 5-gallon bucket with the bottom cut out to build your sand block (note: cut on the inside of the bottom rim, not the bottom of the sides; pack it with sand upside down and tap the sides before removing the bucket by pulling it up from the bottom), any cement-working tools like spreaders and margin trowels, small paint brushes, shovels (especially D-handle spades), spatulas, melon ballers, cake icing spreaders, measuring spoons, straws, wood shish-kabob spears.

TSG Tip 113: These are lessons from the pros at Team Sandtastic. Based out of Sarasota, Florida, they travel the globe creating sand sculptures and hosting Corporate Team Build Programs called Sand Clinics℠. Learn more at teamsandtastic.com.