What to do with shells collected from the beach

With a little bit of paint, glue and a bucket load of shells, we created our own masterpieces to remind us of our visits to the beach.

For those who follow my blog, will know that my family spend a lot of time down the beach.  We're not sitting on a sandy beach getting a tan.  We are learning, we are investigating what the ocean turns up, we are collecting and we are usually wrapped up as the weather can be a bit blustery.

So it will come to no surprise that we have bucket loads of shells.  We also have a box load of crab pieces, wood segments, ray eggshells and other bits that I pretend we don't have.

Having been gifted the new Paint Sticks Bucket, I thought it was perfect timing to put our paints and shells to good use, and I'm so pleased that my boy still wants to craft with me.

Because the paint sticks are far less messy than liquid paint, we can do this craft on the floor in the front room, with just a cover for the carpet.  These sticks feel like chalks or crayons to apply, but the result is a work of art, painted.

What we needed for our seashell masterpieces

* Blank Canvas - can be picked up at various shops.  Wilkos do a pack of three.
* Seaside finds
* PVA glue - currently £1 at Sainsburys
* Paints - we used Paint Stick paints.

We started off by painting our backgrounds.  My son decided he wanted to do the outline of a shark and I decided to do a seahorse.  As our creatures were sea based, it felt right that we create a seaside background.

We stopped for dinner and when we returned to our crafts Max's paints were dry.  He then drew an outline of a shark on his canvas and picked out his favourite shells to add to it.  The result being the picture at the top of this post.  Very artistic.

For my seahorse, I covered sections of the outline in glue and then filtered through all the shells to find suitably small ones to cover the glue.

I'm rather pleased with the outcome, it came out far far better than I expected.

Once all was done, clear up was so quick and easy!

The sticks go back in their bucket, the remaining shells back in their box and the glue in the drawer.  That will always be a winner in my books.

Happy Crafting