If you're ever in Lincoln City, Ore. and see more people than usual beachcombing, there's a good reason: Beautiful pieces of artwork are washing ashore and the artists want you to take them home.

Once a year, the Lincoln City Visitors and Convention Bureau has been leaving glass floats on the beach for lucky beachcombers to find.

Northwest Backroads

Visitors rejoice when they find the colorful glass floats.

Northwest glassblowers hand-make each of the floats – colorful creations that have quickly become collector's items.

In 2000, Jennifer Sears and her fellow so-called float fairies hid 2000 of the floats on Lincoln City's beaches. The next year, they hid 2001 between October and May.

The Visitor's Bureau started the promotion to bring more tourists to town during the off-season and director Jennifer Sears says it's working.

"Our retail shops, our gift shops, and our galleries saw a 35 percent increase in walk-in traffic," she said. "What happens is people don't find a float after three or four days and they go into the galleries and purchase them there."

Of course everyone's first goal is to find one free on the beach.

Japanese fishing floats are the inspiration behind the idea. Some might remember when you could find them all over Northwest beaches. They were attached to fishing nets in Japan, but occasionally they'd break off and be swept all the way to the West Coast.

They have now been replaced by plastic and styrofoam.

Sears says, like the old Japanese floats, some of theirs are pulled out to sea. She says the floats are surprisingly strong, rarely break, and that state officials have given the okay to the project.