I just finished blogging about my vacation to South Padre and mentioned how beautiful the beach was. Well, it was also FULL of shells!
We went to Miami earlier this summer and the few shells I found were all broken, but on South Padre, there was almost an infinite amount of pristine shells to pick up and take home.
I love souvenirs, but I don’t love a lot of knickknacks to dust, so I’ve had to get creative when displaying memories from trips. Usually, it ends up being photos, which is fine, but every once in a while it’s fun to have a physical reminder of a great vacation.
I collected a bag full of shells and brought them home, but didn’t know quite what to do with them. I’m not the biggest fan of beach decor and I didn’t want to go too far in that direction. At first, I thought to simply pour them into a glass vase and call it a day, but that seemed a little boring and wouldn’t make a great how-to video.
So I did a little searching and got the idea to use mason jars. Then, my brain took care of the rest.
I decided to use some nautical rope, white sand, fake pearls, and my shells to create little vignettes inside the jars. It’s a very simple and affordable craft that you can do to remember any beach vacation.
I think this will count as a Dollar Tree craft because I found everything there except for the mason jars, but I’m pretty sure they have them most of the time. I had to go to Walmart for the jars. If you can’t find the individual ones, check the craft aisle. They sell bulk boxes of jars with the kitchen stuff.
Supplies:
- Seashells
- Mason jars (I used three, but would have been good with two)
- Nautical rope
- White sand
- Faux pearls
- Wooden seashell tags
- Glue
- Pen
- Scissors
How-to:
Okay, this one is really, really easy and can bend completely to your tastes.
What I did was fill each of the jars evenly with sand, then placed some of my larger shells on the sand. I sprinkled some of the faux pearls in then repeated shells, pearls, shells until I was done.
I’ll note here that I think I’m going to take the shells out of one of my jars and add them to the other two so that they’re more full. I thought I had more shells than I did.
Once I had all my shells in the jars, I closed up the lids. Then, I took the nautical rope and wrapped it around the top twice, got the length of slack I wanted, then cut it so I could tie it into a bow. I will redo this part when I move my shells around and try to tie some kind of nautical knot, but I’ll have to research how to do it.
When all the rope was on, I took one of the little, wooden seashell tags and wrote “South Padre 2022”. I did use a practice one. Sharpie was way too thick, so I used a normal pen. Then I glued it onto the rope. I used gel superglue, but hot glue might be better. The tags were an impromptu item I found at Dollar Tree that fit with the theme perfectly. A happy accident.
And that’s it! As I said, it’s an easy craft so you can display your shells in a cute way instead of just tossing them into a glass jar.