I blame my mom.

We’d wander along the nearby Qualicum Beach and pick up so many beach pebbles that we were staggering under the load. Then we’d bring them home. Eventually we had so many that my dad made a stone patio from them.
Island pebbles turning me into a mosaic.I still pick up pebbles from beaches, rivers and wherever they catch my eye, all over the world. Sometimes the pebbles are truly ‘treasures’ like this semi-precious red jasper on a Welsh beach. On the same beach was also a beautiful green chert, seen here with red jasper embedded in it.Yellow jasper from a beach in Costa Rica. 
Here is a pink stone (or coral?) I picked up from Traemore Beach in Ireland. Al has tried to limit my ‘rock’ weight to two pounds but he eventually gave up and bought me a stone polisher for Christmas.I went crazy with that stone polisher. When polished, the smaller stones look the same way they did when the waves rushed over them, after they receded leaving wet glistening jewels for the picking. I even started polishing the small boring stones that surfaced in my garden. All rocks all have personality and when you gather a bunch from one area there’s often a family resemblance. Here’s a rock family that someone else gathered together at Ruby Beach in the Olympic National Park, Washington.Costa Rican stone and relatives. These greenish Dallasite stones are from Dallas Rd. in Victoria on Vancouver Island, BC. When I’m holding a smooth water-washed pebble in my hand it feels like I’m holding a talisman. I didn’t find any fossils when I was exploring a fossil-laden beach in Odense but I was just as fascinated by the flints. Lately I have started photographing them on site especially when the background is as interesting as this sand wall embedded with fossil shells at Sandcut Beach on Vancouver Island.
Underwater crew: a reunion of rocks in the clear waters of Okanogan Lake, big and little, they all have a family resemblance.

More of the Lens Artists Photo Callenge: Treasures