To me, summer = beach, beach = seashells. I have quite a collection – Panama City, North Myrtle Beach, Cannon Beach, several beaches in California and a beach in Mexico are represented.
Most of them have sat in my craft drawer or a jar on the bathroom counter, just waiting to a creative way to be displayed. Thank you, Pinterest.
In my summer bucket list post, I mentioned painting seashells. This is such an easy craft, it doesn’t really need a tutorial, but since I put my own spin on the Pinterest versions, and the shells turned out so well, I really just wanted an excuse to post pictures.
So here you are:
You will need:
- Seashells
- Metallic craft paint
- Paint brushes
Originally, I planned to use silver and gold, but I loved the gold look so much that I used it on all of my shells.
There’s a few ways you can approach the actual painting:
- On some shells, I painted a very thin coat that blended into the texture of the shell, almost looking like it was just a part of the shell originally.
- On others, I covered the entire shell, front and back.
- Then to get fancy and put my own spin on it, I did some “dipped” shells, and various striped shells. Those are my favorite, because the natural beauty of the shell shines through.
So once your shells are painted, what do you do with them?
Show off, naturally. Some of the smaller ones I display in a glass jar on the bathroom counter. I use the big ones to organize my make up drawer – they’re lovely containers for hair ties, small eye shadow compacts, lipsticks, etc.
But for my favorite ones, with these frames from Ikea, a couple book pages, and some hot glue, I made these shadow boxes.
