Once Christmas and the holidays are over…I look forward to putting out a few pieces of general winter decor. You know…things that don’t scream Christmas! That’s when I turn to home decor that features sleds, mittens, gloves, winter boots, snowmen, scarves, snowflakes, etc. Just like other seasons of the year…I like to put out a few little winter decor home accents. They had a nice pop of color! You’ll find 400+ painted seashell designs on the TCC blog.
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For this project I used 3″ to 4″ wide clam shells that I collected from the beach. Wash them in warm soapy water using Dawn Liquid Dish Soap. Why Dawn? It does the best job at removing sand, debris and fishy odors. Rinse with clean water and let them air dry overnight. That’s basically all of the prep work that you need to do!
You’ll need to base coat the clam shells with your desired color of acrylic craft paint. I used shades of blue. For each shell, I did apply 2 coats of acrylic craft paint to get the coverage that I needed. Let dry until the paint is no longer tacky.
Use a pencil to sketch on your desired design. I used a pack of BETEM Acrylic Paint Markers to paint the designs onto the seashells. Each paint marker has a dual-ended tip, a medium and fine tip. These paint markers don’t require any priming and there’s NO FOUL PAINT ODORS! Use the medium tip for the larger areas and the fine tip for facial features and outlining. You can do the design entirely with paint!!!
For the smaller shell I did add an orange carrot nose that I made out of air dry sculpting clay. I glued it on using Gorilla Glue. The dark blue clam shell….I had a small pre-painted wooden snowman in my scrap box and decided to just glue him onto the front of that shell using Gorilla Glue. You never want to use hot glue because you won’t get a firm hold. Use Gorilla Glue or E6000 Glue. Let everything dry.
To finish them up you need to brush-on 1-2 light coats of Clear Mod Podge with a Glossy Finish across each seashell. If you want to add glitter accents…sprinkle the glitter on while the Mod Podge is still wet. It goes on white but will dry crystal clear. This will protect the paint on the seashells allowing you to display them inside or outside of the home.