Our family took our first vacation in about six years and went to Florida! What a fantastic time! Of course, every time we hit the beach, there I would be collecting shells. One time my daughter looked up and I had wandered about a mile down the beach with my shirt FULL of shells! I can't help it, they are such a beautiful gift from God, and hey! Free souvenirs! When we got home I had over 300 shells! What to do with them? Of course, I went to Pinterest for inspiration. There are sooooo many awesome ideas out there! Then I stumbled across a number of pins that said I had to clean them. :( I was not a happy camper. We live near lakes, so I am aware of the need to clean shells we find here because the water is stagnant, but really? The beautiful, ever changing ocean needed to be cleaned from my shells? I was NOT going to bleach them - NO WAY! I do that with lake shells and it makes them white. I wanted to keep all of the glorious colors where they belong so I grabbed Dawn dish soap, a bucket of hot water, a strainer and a toothbrush and I scrubbed every single one. That sucked! It took about three days to clean them all.
So, they were finally clean and I had one day before I had to go back to work. I wanted to make something for my co-workers at Home Depot, because there was no way I could afford to buy everyone something in Florida. I combined a number of ideas from Pinterest and created a pretty cute little gift for my friends!
Simple. Easy. Pretty cute! How did I make these? I chose the biggest and unbroken shells with smooth insides (to write on). Then, I rifled through my craft supplies...
I took a super fine Sharpie made for porous surfaces and wrote the phrase, "May you always have a shell in your pocket and sand in your shoes..." Someone had pinned that for a wall and I loved the saying! Once I wrote on all the shells, I took metallic Sharpies and colored just the edge of the shell (front and back) and then added a little starfish after the phrase.
For good measure, I wiped a layer of Mod Podge over the markered areas and let them dry.
That's it. Simple, fun and a great little gift for all my co-workers at the Depot! I made about 25 the first night and another 25 the next night because they went so fast!
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