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Summer Decorating with Seashells
Seashells are reminders of summer days at the beach and that’s why we love to decorate with them. Even if you don’t have your own personal collection of shells, a bag or two of dollar store seashells will help to bring a beach-y feel to your home this summer.
Here’s how to decorate and entertain using dollar store seashells.
Beach Bowl
For an easy-to-make centrepiece, try this glassy idea:
Materials Needed:
- Medium-sized fishbowl vase
- White decorative sand
- Bag of dollar store sea shells
- Medium-weight floral wire
- Long wooden bead
A small flower pot, painted a bright colour, stands in for a plastic bucket. Fill the bottom of a fish bowl vase with white decorative sand. Fashion a handle for your bucket with a length of medium-weight floral wire, add a wooden bead to it and bend the ends into hooks to hang on the edge of the pot.
Fill your beach bucket with larger shells and sprinkle a few smaller shells in the sand to create a mini reminder of childhood days collecting the seas treasures on a beach vacation.
Nautical Napkin Rings
I never get tired of fashioning different kinds of napkin rings to suit different occasions. To make nautical napkin rings for a summer party, you will need:
- Package of decorative white or beige rope – Package of 15′ at Dollarama
- Small murex-type shells (see below) – on hand or dollar store
- Glue gun – on hand
- Wide tape – on hand
- Scissors – on hand
You’ll need about eight inches of rope for each napkin ring. To prevent the ends from unraveling, wrap wide clear tape around the place where you want to cut.
Cut the rope in the middle of the taped part so you have two finished ends. Repeat along the length of the rope until you have enough rope lengths for each napkin ring you want to make.
Hot glue one end of the rope inside the shell.
Repeat with the other end.
Bonus Tip: Dollar store bandannas make great napkins, especially in this case, if you can find some with a nautical design.
Shadowboxing With Shells
To make a trio of framed shells you will need:
– 3-5 ½ x 3-inch frames with a 3-1/4-inch width
– 9 small shells, three of each kind
– sheet of blue scrapbook paper
– pencil
– scissors
– glue stick
– glue gun
Take the back of one of the frames off and trace its size onto the back of the scrapbook paper three times.
Glue the cut scrapbook paper directly onto the inside of the frame backing. I happened to have a water-patterned scrapbook paper on hand, but any ocean blue paper will do.
The glass in these frames is permanently attached, so be sure the shells fit comfortably inside the frame with the back on before you hot glue them to the backing.
You can choose three different shells of the same size or vary the sizes from largest to smallest.
If you want to make your display look like it belongs in a museum, print the names of the different shells you used, cut each one to fit on the outside of the frames and glue them to the top or bottom of each frame.
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