Tracy's Trinkets and Treasures: Displaying Vacation Shells

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Displaying Vacation Shells

My son collected a ton of shells and a large piece of coral for me during our Florida vacation. I did several posts on our trip if you want to look at the archives. I highly recommend Florida as a vacation spot. I don’t have any beachy decor in my house, but I wanted to display the shells anyway. Here is what I came up with.

I tied jute rope around the lamp shade to give it some contrast. I might want to change it up again so tying it meant I could easily remove it.

I put a tag on the lamp to label our vacation shells and because I like tags.

On some of these shells I did vacation themed rub-ons.

I made another shadow box like the one I did with my rocks from the Hamptons. You can see it here. I picked one that looked like weathered wood from Hobby Lobby.

Can you see the shark’s tooth we found? We found several on a beach in Venice.

These were 2 of my favorite shells. The spiny one and the curly one.

I also painted my frame holder to look rusty. It was black. I thought it looked much better rusty.

I used a stencil brush so that it would be more stippled when painted on and not brush marks with a color that looked like rust called Autumn Brown.
After it dried I added some burnt umber in different places to make it look a little darker. Any dark brown would work if you don't have the burnt umber color. When you do the stencil brush you use it dry and tap it on a paper plate first to get the extra paint off. Your project will dry very very fast so it is handy if you are impatient like me.