DIY Seashell and Sand Decor Ideas

Have you ever wondered what to do with all the seashells you bring home from vacation? Well I have several ideas for all of those shells. I started doing this I would say maybe 8 years ago before I was ever married. My family used to take vacations to SC just about every year and of course I'd go with them and like most people I'd bring a ton of seashells home, but never really had anything to do with them. One year when we went I really had no desire to leave and was taking going back home pretty hard so I bought a little extra something home with me. I decided to fill 3 water bottles up with wet sand from the ocean to bring home with me because I thought I could kind of bottle of the sea water sent to have for a little while. Well after the vacation was over and done and i had adjusted to being back home, I was putting up my things from vacation and saw the sand and shells and got the bright idea to make some decorations out of it. When I looked around the house I found several empty vases and filled them half way with sand than laid shells on top of that until I was happy with how it looked and set them around the bedroom. Ever since then it's become a thing with me that every time I go to the beach I have to bring home bottles of sand and shells to make decorations out of for the house, I must have 20+ sand and shell decorations around the house now. I really went crazy with the whole sand and shell idea when my husband and I got married, we got married on the beach and now I have sand and shell decor around the house from our wedding / honeymoon. I think it's a great idea to showcase shells you find, and it's also a excellent way to remember vacations or special moments past. Below are some of the things I decided to do my my sand and shells. I'm sure there are lots of other creative ways to display sand and shells but these are a few of my ideas.

If you have a empty vase laying around the house, they work wonderfully for this purpose. As for the colored glass gems, those was my husbands idea to add a little color it.

You can even flip over larger shells to make votive holders out of them!

DIY Coastal Letter

I've been getting into the wooden letters lately. I've bought several from various places to decorate different ways. This is my first DIY letter project, and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It took me about 3 hours to make it which is way more time than it should take all of you if any of you choose to make this. As I do this tutorial I will explain why it took me so long. This is a pretty simple and cheap project to do, and I had a lot of fun making it, can't wait to make more letters in the future.

What you need:

Wooden letter (Michaels)
Super glue (4 pack Hobby Lobby $3.77) I ended up using 3 tubes on this project.
Paint (if you plan to paint your letter) as well as painting supplies, whatever you want to use to paint with.

Glass gems (Michaels or you can get $1.00 packs at the Dollar Tree)
Mixed bag of seashells (Michaels) or natural shells from the ocean if you have some on hand.
White rope (Hobby Lobby)
Aluminum foil

The glass gems I used. I got 1 large pack of teal at Michaels and 2 small packs of light blue at the Dollar Tree. I bought too many but my letter was medium sized and I wanted extra for future projects, buy enough to fit whatever size letter you have.

This is the rope i bought and the seashells I bought.

Step 1:

Paint your letter, mine went from white....

To a pretty coastal blue color.

Step 2:

Take your glass pieces and super glue them onto your letter. Sorry don't have any photos of this step, forgot to take some photos while gluing down the gems. Before gluing gems it's best to arrange them on the letter before gluing to see how you want them to go, than glue them down once you have them arranged how you want them.

Step 3:

After gluing your gems on, cut a piece of rope. Loop your rope where you want it on your letter like I did. If you don't like how I did mine you can always do a bow, or swap the rope out for white ribbon and tie a pretty bow. This took me a little bit of time as well. I had to figure out how I wanted the rope to look, if I wanted it in a bow or what, eventually came up with the idea to do the rope this way, reminds me of sailing this way.

Step 4:

Arrange your shells and glue your shells to your letter.

This is what took me the longest, I had to figure out how to glue the shells down. After about a hour my husband came up with the idea to stuff the shells with aluminum foil. After getting the foil formed we glued the foil to the shell then glued the shell to the letter.

Step 5:

Allow the glue to dry then you are finished.

DIY Framed Map

I decided to frame a map of SC to put in our home. South Carolina is a very special place to me for various reasons and I thought it would be a nice thing to have around the house. I found a place online I could order a SC map for free and have it mailed to me, so I did. It was a quick and simple project to do, didn't take hardly any time and the only money I had to put into it was the cost of the frame.

I bought this nice frame from Hobby Lobby to put the map in.

Laid the glass from the frame down on the map and traced around it and cut the part out I wanted.

Put the map in the frame, and it's done.