Coastal Crafts: Seashell Covered Wood Dolphin Wall Art

I’ve been collecting seashells for 35+ years. When I say collecting, I’m talking about seashells that I’ve personally picked up off of a beach somewhere during our travels. I bring them home, clean them up, sort them and use a lot of them in my craft projects which you will find around my home. If you love the beach you would love my home decor coastal style.

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A few months ago I shared with you my Coastal Crafts: Seashell Covered Wood Seahorse Wall Art project and you can visit that blog post to learn more about it. After completing that first wall art piece I decided to make a few more! Some of them I’m keeping and others are being gifted to friends and family members. Three that I recently made were orders that I received from a Bed & Breakfast Inn.

To get started you want to decide on which marine animal you want to make. I chose a dolphin and then headed online to find a free dolphin template. I used Google image search to find the shape that I wanted. I re-sized the image (template) and made it larger. I sent the image to a local print shop (my image was too large for my home printer) and they printed it out for me (cost only $5.00). I used that image as my pattern.

Hubby had some scraps of pallet wood laying around and piece them together with small wood nails and glue. He used his saw to cut out my dolphin shape and his sander to smooth it down. We didn’t make it too smooth because I’m covering up the entire surface with paint and seashells. I painted all sides with 2 coats of white paint and left it dry overnight.

You need to sort through your seashells. I like to sort mine my type and then size. You’ll need tiny, small and medium sized shells for this project. Make sure that they’ve been properly cleaned. You don’t want any fishy odors or debris on them.

Lay your paper pattern out onto the floor or table top. Place shells in a pattern that you like on top of your paper pattern. This process took me 1-2 hours as I move shells all around until I get them exactly the way that I want them. I only do this for the outline of the piece. You’ll fill in that outline with tiny and small shells that can easily be mixed and matched. This will give you some direction on shell placement.

To glue them onto your wood shape you’ll need to use a combination of E6000 Adhesive Glue and a Hot Glue Gun with Glue Sticks. I use the E6000 Adhesive for all of my shells that go around the perimeter of the shape and for medium sized shells (they’re weightier). It does take 2-3 hours to dry. I use the hot glue gun to adhere the tiny and small shells when filling in the rest. Use a hair dryer set on the cool setting to “blow off” any of those icky strings of hot glue!

For this particular piece I used a combination of seashells: scallops, surf clams, razor clams, slipper shells, oyster shells, tritons, spirals, jingles, tiny whelk shells, small pieces of white coral, moon shells, broken sand dollars, etc. For the eye…you need for that to stand out. You can use a darker colored Moon Shell or Sea Urchin which looks nice too.

To finish up you need to protect your masterpiece with 2-3 coats of clear acrylic spray sealer. You can use a matte finish (I like that best) or a glossy finish. Do that outside on a nice weather day as it does have an odor to it until it dries. On the back you’ll want to add a saw tooth hanger so that you can hang it up onto your wall.

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