Oh…how cute are these hand-painted Halloween theme seashells? Way too cute and super easy to make! They would make fabulous table-top decor, party favors or hand them out to trick or treaters who stop by on Halloween night. If you don’t have access to small seashells you can certainly paint the designs onto smooth pebbles or river rocks. You can whip up several of them in just one weekend. Check out the TCC blog while you’re here for over 400 seashell arts and craft project ideas!
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Wash all seashells or river rocks in warm, soapy water using Dawn Liquid Dishwashing Soap. Why Dawn? It does the best job at removing dirt, sand, debris and fishy odors. Rinse with clean water. Lay them out in a single layer to air dry overnight.
Using a paint brush and white acrylic craft paint base coat the shells with 1-2 coats of white paint. You’ll need about 45 minutes of drying time between coats. You can speed up the drying time by having a table-top fan blow air across them while they’re drying. Applying a white base coat allows the colors that you’ll apply on top to be more vivid. Without it…colors look drab. Trust me, give them a nice base coat of white paint!
You don’t need any patterns or templates for these 3 designs. To do them quickly and easily I used a pack of BETEM Acrylic Paint Markers that I picked up from Amazon. Each paint marker has a dual-ended tip (one medium and one fine). They don’t require priming, no drippy or leaky messes and no foul paint odors! Plus, they dry quickly.
Candy Corn – Apply a coat of bronze metallic acrylic craft paint. Let it dry. Use a pencil to sketch a triangular shape for the candy corn. Use paint markers to color-in the candy corn (white, orange and yellow). Use a fine tip black paint marker to write your desired wording underneath the candy corn.
Jack ‘o Lantern Pumpkin – Apply a coat of orange craft paint. Let it dry. Use paint markers to add the pumpkin’s eyes, nose, mouth and stem. Let dry.
Black Spider with Web – This one was painted on a small oyster shell. Use a black fine tip paint marker to make the web and the spider. It doesn’t have to look perfect. You should angle it so that the main design (the spider) fits within the oyster shell. Let dry
You need to seal-in the painted design. You can brush-on 1-2 light coats of Clear Mod Podge with a glossy finish or you can do what I did. The camera doesn’t pick up the glittery shimmer finish…but trust me, it’s there and really makes them look nice.
I used the FolkArt Multi-Surface Dragonfly Glaze that I purchased from Amazon. Oh my gosh…I love the shimmery finish it gives to all of my painted seashells and kindness rocks. If you like shimmer without the hassle of messing with glitter, you’ll love this Dragonfly Glaze. Just brush it on with a paint brush. It dries crystal clear! Fantastic product!
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