When I found out we we’re headed to the beach for our first vaca­tion as a fam­ily I wanted to do some­thing to mark the occasion.

Has any­one else found them­selves since hav­ing kids want­ing to turn every­thing into a tra­di­tion or huge mon­u­men­tal mem­ory moment? “Oh my good­ness. We must take a pic­ture. This is the first time he’s ever been in Toys R Us!” That’s how I am.

So since I’m now on these new ‘I want to be a crafter kick’ (in fact my first sewing class is tonight) I decided to make a seashell wreath.

Here’s what you need:

12 inch sty­ro­foam wreath
Flo­ral Wire
Rib­bon (I used about 3 rolls!)
Glit­ter
Glass mar­bles (same or sim­i­lar color to rib­bon)
Glue Gun
Shells (I col­lected mine from the beach because I wanted them to be “authen­tic” from our vaca­tion. But you can buy them too of course)
Starfish (bought from OBX gift shop)

Step 1: If you use shells from the beach I would give them a good rinse first. I dumped mine in the bath tub (not a great idea) and let them soak in cold water to get all the dirt and sand off. Then dry them on a big towel.

Step 2: Wrap rib­bon around the wreath and glue the rib­bon to what­ever side you are going to use as the back.

Step 3: Wrap the flo­ral wire around the wreath a cou­ple of times because the shells are heavy!

Step 4: Start glu­ing sea shells. I used mostly big ones to fill the gaps and then used small ones to fill in irreg­u­lar spots the big ones couldn’t cover. This part requires you to be a bit cre­ative in how you place the shells so it stays secure to the wreath. So just play around with posi­tions of the shells.

Step 5: Use glass mar­bles to fill in any other gaps not filled with shells.

Step 6: Spray wreath with craft bond (do this out­side because it is super sticky!) and then imme­di­ately after spray­ing with glue shake the glit­ter onto the wreath

Step 7: Glue starfish to wreath. Mine has actu­ally fallen off because there’s no real flat place on the star. So I think I’m going to poke a lit­tle hole and thread fish­ing wire through and then then thread the fish­ing wire through the big moun­tain of hot glue it fell from and then tie to the back of the wreath.

Step 8: Take an extra piece of rib­bon and glue to the back of the wreath so it will hide the flo­ral wire hanger.

And you’re done!

I loved the way it turned out. I had this wreath in my head the whole time sit­ting on the beach and I really wanted it to remind me of our vaca­tion and I think it does! And you don’t need as many shells as I have. I got a lot because I wanted to make one for myself and my mom.

So tonight is my first sewing class. I’m ner­vous that I’ll have to take this Sewing 101 more then once, but super excited.

Shawn sur­prised me last week with a sewing/craft table and it now sits in our bed­room. But as soon as we gebt back to our own place I plan on get­ting my own lit­tle craft room.

I’ll like you for­ever, I’ll love you for always. As long as I’m writ­ing my reader’s you’ll be…
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This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 3:54 pm and is filed under DIY, crafting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.