I have a friend who is into sailboats. They love to get out on the open water to do some sailing. They like to compete in various races and participate in boating parades. Me…not so much. I sadly get motion sickness! Anyway, he asked me to do several clam shells with a sailboat design for him to hand out to his friends. I’m not a talented painter, so I went with decoupage to do these designs.
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The design was made with a combination of things. I call it mixed media. I used acrylic craft paint, glitter, micro beads and fabric! I found the adorable sailboat fabric at my local Dollar Tree. I got a fat-quarter for $1.25. When decoupaging fabric I recommend using cotton or mostly cotton blended fabrics. They adhere better with less wrinkling.
Base coat the clam shells with 1-2 coats of white acrylic craft paint. While the paint is drying use sharp scissors to cut your desired image from fabric. In this case…sail boats. Cut close to the image that you can. Remove any strings and fraying as you go along. Make sure the cut image lays flat…so remove any wrinkles.
Use Clear Mod Podge Sealer to adhere the fabric onto the seashells. I put a coat of Mod Podge down first. Lay the fabric on top. Use my fingers to smooth it down and then brush another coat of Mod Podge on top. Let dry. Once dry, I added water underneath each boat by painting it on with a blue metallic acrylic craft paint. Let dry.
On some of the seashells I decided to get a little fancier by adding micro-fine glitter and micro-sized beads to the water area…to give texture and interest. Brush the entire seashell with a generous amount of Mod Podge Clear Sealer. While it’s still very wet…sprinkle the glitter or the micro beads onto the areas you want them. Lay the shell flat to dry which will take 1-2 hours.
If you enjoy painting on seashells or crafting with seashells…you’ll find over 150+ seashell craft projects right here on the Two Classy Chics blog! We will be sharing more seashell craft projects in the future too!
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