I love when my friends can come to me with ideas. I love that when they see something they like, want or think is cool and say to themselves, " Oh, Stephanie can make that!" Well my friend, challenge accepted. There's nothing better than seeing the look on their face when you hand them a complete project they have mentioned at some point.
Over the summer while on our big move across county we had the opportunity to stay with some dear friends. Their family just bought a house a couple months before we got there. Let me say this place was beautiful it was in the woods on the lake and and ocean! Yeah pretty cool location it has it all. So, one day the lady of the house showed me a screen shot of an art piece from Pier one that she liked. Since they had just moved in they were needing more home decor items. So I was happy to help with that.
This was the screen shot she showed me. Very cool piece for sure. We packed up the kids and walked down to the beach. Once we were there we all looked for what we called "unicorn horn shells". If you know me you know I love the beach and, even more love looking for sea glass and shells. We had a great afternoon and we all filled out bags with the "unicorn horns" of all sizes, shapes and color. Once we got back we washed all the shells and rocks and other fun beach treasures. We even found a horse shoe crab!
Once they were all dried I put them in to size piles. I pulled out all the broken ones or, at least ones I couldn't used.Then I started to hot glue them to a neutral colored 12x12 card stock paper that I got at Michael's. I also found a beautiful white 12x12 showed box there that was on sale for 50%. Always look for coupons for the craft stores there is always something out there.
I stated with the smallest shells and glued them in a circle. I continued to add shells in circles trying to get the tips in-between the shells from them previous row. I keep at this until I had roughly a 1.5inch all the way around the the circle while trying to keep everything tight and in a circle. It might sound funny but, you use what you got around the house. I used a glass pot lid to get the shape I needed. I would hold it over the shells and, that helped me see where I needed to fill in spots. To finish it all off I added some tacky glue to the inside of the frame. Then added the paper with shells on it. The frame came with these cute pins so I added them back in to pin the art to the back of the frame.
I LOVE how this turned out! I love it even more than the photo she shared with me because the white color that the shells are beautiful. This project took me two days to do. One day to find and clean all the shells and one day to buy the supplies and glue everything together. The true test is what did she think?..... She loved it and had a spot waiting for it.
Up on the shelf in the living room it went right next to the other home decor project I made for her as a thank you. I love being able to give a little something back to my friends. Being able to put a smile on their face. A little reminder that I'm thinking of them and that I took time to create something with love. Plus who doesn't love hand made art in your home. Something with a story, in this case something the kids can say, "I helped with that!".
What have you made with beach treasures? I would love to see them.
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