~From our Oldies but Goodies Collection~

Aloha, all!  Jody came to the conclusion recently that it was high time we had a easy seashell craft post, and I quite agree.  So, while she sets to work on a very spiffy bit of beachy embroidery (embellished with beach treasures, of course!), I have decided to make wallflowers.  “What do wallflowers have to do with the beach?”  you might ask, and it is a perfectly valid question.  The answer is: I made framed and matted seashell wall hangings out of Jody and Greg’s Sanibel Island, Florida beachcombing finds.  I arranged the seashells in the shape of flowers.

This was a delightfully easy process that I’m sure any person with a lot of seashells on his or her hands could manage.  What you’ll need, if you’re planning to do this project yourself, is a nice frame, some card-stock or matting, seashells, and a hot glue gun.

For my first seashell wallflower, I used two pieces of matting with ovals cut out of the middle and a bit of natural-looking brown paper in a nice, dark brown frame.  Check it out!

Wallflower Number 1 (craft and photo by E.G.D.)

For this one, I used a lightning whelk as a sort of vase or base for the seashell flower arrangement.  Shell fragments made for quite shiny and metallic-looking leaves, and some conch shells made for flower petals.  I think the middle of the flower is a shark eye snail shell.  Please bear in mind that ANY of these shells can be substituted by whatever you happen to have in your collection.  Case in point, here’s the second seashell flower arrangement I put together:

Wallflower Number 2 (craft and photo by E.G.D.)

This is set in a dollar-store (Daiso 100-yen store, actually) photo frame I bought a long time ago in Japan.  The background is a recycled, folded greeting card envelope.  Notice that the effect is more or less the same as my first project, but none of the seashells are the same!  That’s the great thing about such a simple craft.  No two of your seashell flower wall hangings will ever be the same!  I was thinking that a whole series of these would look great on a bathroom wall, and really, these would make for amazingly thoughtful and low-cost holiday gifts for those of you who are looking to go D.I.Y. with your gifting this year.  Alternately, if you substituted white glue for the hot glue, this would be a great easy seashell craft for the whole family to enjoy.  My little niece and nephew always have a ball doing this sort of thing.

So, happy seashell crafting, everyone!  Rather than link the above images to the store (our usual policy for our copyrighted images), I left them linked to significantly larger versions of the images.  Please feel free to use them as a reference, but please don’t use them for anything else without writing to us and asking for permission.  If you have any questions, or if you’d like to share your thoughts on this project, please leave a comment!  We’d love to hear from you.  – E.G.D.

An oldie but a goodie! Originally posted on October 27, 2011

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