Snowman Painted Clam Shells Kid’s Craft Project

Snowman Painted Clam Shells Kid's Craft ProjectThe Christmas holiday is less than 8 weeks away, so it’s time to ramp up all of your holiday craft-making into high gear. Over the next 7 weeks we’ll be sharing about a dozen holiday craft projects with all of you and most of them are geared towards kids! It’s a great way to keep the kids busy during the weekends making holiday decorations and/or Christmas gifts.

Two weeks ago my 8 year old granddaughter and I got together and painted up some large Clam Shells that we brought home from the beach. Our’s measure about 6-7″ in width. Yes, very large! You don’t have to be an artist to make them as ONLY simple painting is involved. If you don’t have large clam shells, you can go out and find some large river rocks and paint the design on those!

We have our’s displayed outside lining the steps as you come up our front porch and into the main entrance to our house. We made several different designs that we’ll be featuring in additional posts over the next few weeks. Fun!!!

Snowman Painted Clam Shells Kid’s Craft Project

Large Clam Shells (clean and dry)
Acrylic Paint (white, orange and dark blue)
Paint Brush, Palette and Water dish
Round Wooden Toothpicks
Black Sharpie Marker (fine point)
Newspaper and Paper Towels
Clear Acrylic Spray Sealer

Snowman Painted Clam Shells Kid's Craft Project

Cover your work surface with newspaper. Paint the entire outside of the clam shell with dark blue acrylic paint. Let dry and add a second coat of paint. You want to get good coverage, so that none of the seashell shows through.

Once dry, use white acrylic paint to make the snowman’s face. You’ll want to paint your 3/4 circle in the corner of the seashell as shown in the photograph. Dip the end of a round wooden toothpick into white acrylic paint and dot-on snow flakes randomly around the dark blue painted area to give the appearance that snow is falling.

After the snowman’s head has dried you’ll want to use orange acrylic paint to add a carrot-shaped now. Use a black Sharpie marker to draw on his eyes and mouth. Use the end of a round wooden toothpick to dot on white paint in the center of each eye. Let your shell dry completely overnight.

Take it outside and lay it down on a sheet of newspaper and lightly spray a coat of clear acrylic sealer to seal in the paint. Wait 1-2 hours and spray on a second coat and let dry for 6-8 hours. The paint is now sealed and you can use them indoors or outdoors and you won’t have to worry about the paint chipping off!

We had a great time painting these clam shells and we’re looking forward to sharing some additional Kid’s Craft Projects with all of you over the next few weeks.

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Comments

  1. Jo-Ann Brightman says

    This is a cute holiday project to do with older kids. I do have different size shells and would use them when my kids are older.

  2. You have been keeping that Grand daughter busy! I net she liked making these. I am envious of you and your shells! The colors on these are nice and bright. I bet too they could be made ino ornaments . I wonder if you put protector on them if they would work outside?

  3. Dana Rodriguez says

    Those are really cute Shelly! What a creative craft! I would love to see photos of how you decorate with these.

    • You bet! I have stairs/steps leading up to my front porch. I place one big clam shell on the side of each step leading up. I’ll take a photo once I get all of my Christmas ones out there after Thanksgiving. I do the same thing with our spring, summer, patriotic, halloween, fall and christmas ones.

  4. I have never seen anything like these and I love them. I think we would have a blast making these this holiday season thank you for sharing you always have the most clever ideas.

  5. These are adorable!! We just visited the beach for the first time in years and we collected so many shells! This would be a great idea to use some of the larger shells to decorate. The kids would love to do this!!

  6. That is so cute. Those were some large shells. We are still rock painting. We are doing more next week.

    • We do a lot of rock painting too! The Princess just painted snowmen and reindeer on some of our river rocks.

  7. Cute project. What do you do on the back of these? Can you drill holes for putting on the tree?

    • You would have to use smaller sized clam shells if you wanted to use them as Christmas ornaments. The ones that we made are huge clam shells and would be too heavy. We do have some smaller seashell ornaments that we’re working on. You would use a dremel to drill a hole, not a regular drill.