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I'd say try soak the sand in water to make it more solid but it'll evaporate and your frames won't be consistent, my solution is to by a pair of helping hands as a rig and mask out the arms.
Using sand with puppets in stop motion is not easy. Even walking on sand and making an pixelation of someone walking won't be easy to achieve. Sand is grainy and small, having LEGO next to it loses that perspective because the sand looks bigger. You would have to buy a specific type of sand to make it smaller and finer. There's also another type of sand that holds it's shape like clay and it's not loose.
You can see that the "sand" in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBpmoBLvIko moves but only a tiny bit, it's probably all cardboard or something like that.
You could try use clay of a sandy colour that has grainy feel or look to it. I don't know where to find them but I'm sure they exist.

Last edited by Kd2000 (August 16, 2015 (04:03am))

You could use the trick Mobdeli used in Egyptian Holiday.
Show an establishing shot of the sandy base, then shoot the scene waist-up on the figures.

Then, you could occasionally make use of full-body shots/leg shots by using some sort of holding rig, (Like Helping Hands) then erase the rig in post.

You only need to show the minifigures on sand a couple of times, and the audience will be tricked into thinking they're always on it. It's a matter of showing only certain things at certain times, and their minds filling in the gaps.