Sea Shell Letters

Initial Sea Shell Letter

Supplies:
Cardboard Letter
Ceramcoat acrylic paint
Glazed shells  ("How to")
Tacky glue

For this Initial letter, I found a large, hollow cardboard letter. This letter has good depth so it can stand up on a desk or shelf on its own. I painted the entire letter with two coats of tan acrylic paint. I arranged my shells before gluing them down to give myself an idea of the overall look I was going for. This is where having a variety of shapes and sizes works to your advantage, because you can get a 3D effect by layering!

Nautical Phrase

Supplies:
Wooden letters
Ceramcoat acrylic paint
Glazed shells ("How to")
Tacky glue
Twine

The beauty of these nautical letters, is you can chose many combinations to make unique phrases! Other suggestions are SEA, LAKE, your favorite beach town or someone's name. For this project, I used smaller wooden letters that I found at Michael's. These don't stand up on their own. I have mine leaning against the wall on a book shelf, or you could mount them on nails. I painted each with two coats of light blue acrylic paint. There was an edge around the outline of each letter, which I used to my advantage. I affixed twine to the edge with Tacky glue. [Hint: When gluing the twine outline you have to take each section a couple inches at a time. I would hold each section down for about 2 minutes until the glue started to adhere stronger. If you go too fast it will come right off!] I then glued the glazed shells to the bottom of each letter with Tacky glue.

Close-up of detail

Fun tips

I glued some shells upside down, because the inside of the shell was a beautiful color while the top was plain white. I think it adds some variety to the design!

I added pieces of weathered coral I found to add some contrast, seen above.