Painted Pennsylvania Hiking Seashell Designs

We live in Pennsylvania and one of the most popular outdoor hobbies is hiking! We have beautiful state parks and local parks with hiking trails, waterfalls, etc. Millions of people come to Pennsylvania from all around the world to hike the Appalachian Trail which runs through central Pennsylvania. In honor of Pennsylvania’s great history of hiking trails…we painted two large clam seashells.

We collected 4″ and 5″ wide clam shells from the beach. You can certainly use smaller sized seashells. The background colors were added with acrylic paint and a paint brush. You’ll need 2-3 coats of acrylic craft paint with 30 minutes of drying time between coats.

From the internet we printed out an outline of the state of Pennsylvania using a FREE image from Google Image Search. Of course…you’ll need to resize it before printing to make sure it will fit onto the shell. Print it out and use that as your template. The PA STATE was then painted onto the shell using an Acrylic Paint Pen Marker in a light beige color. A dot was added onto the map to show one of our favorite places to go hiking. Use paint pen markers to add dots around the border. Let dry.

Optional – You can use a Paint Pen Marker to write on the back of the seashell the name of your favorite State Park, Hiking Trail and/or dates you visited to keep it as a keepsake.

The second design has a unique background color. Yellow, Orange and dark Red paints were muddled together while still wet to come up with a sunset background of colors. Let dry. Use a dark brown paint pen marker to make the trail and the trunk of the pine trees. Pennsylvania is known for its pine trees! Then use light, medium and dark green paint pen markers to make the simple-looking pine trees.

Once the seashells are dry you want to take them outside and spray them with 2-3 coats of a Clear Acrylic Spray Sealer. Allow for 30-40 minutes of drying time between coats. This will protect the painted finish and help to preserve the clam shell.

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