My children like to collect little treasures: stones, fossils, shells, beads and crystals. They secrete them in boxes or little bags which end up scattered around the house. Sometimes they trade them with each other, but mostly they just enjoy the simple tactile delight of collecting them, and knowing that they belong to them, like the piggy banks full of tooth fairy and pocket money coins they count endlessly but never want to spend. We have so many of them now, I thought I might start making some sort of photographic record of them, but then I got carried away trying to make artful arrangements instead.

© images and content Emily Hughes and searchingtosee, 2013