Every summer we spend at least one week at Cape Cod. My parents live there and my family has a house that we rent out but we get a week at the house every year. We always try to have at least one beach day and sometimes walk on the beach in the evening. My favorite thing about walking the beach is picking up shells and rocks. I love finding the pieces of quahog shells which is what wampum is made from. We have a rock and shell collection. Some are found, some gifts and some bought. I took a combination of our collection from this year and past years and made some crafts. I started with one I was inspired by the Coastal Seashell Wreath over at Amy Latta Creations. I saw her creation last week on Facebook and fell in love with it. I headed over to Michaels and found the grapevine wreath and a wooden plaque for about $6 total. I also picked up some wooden framed shapes for my other project. They were 99 cents each. So I took our collection and created these fun pieces of beach art.
I loved Amy's idea to use the grapevine wreath to give the shape and some dimension. I followed her tutorial but also added sand dollar and sea stars. I also used pieces of shell like my quahogs. I used craft glue to glue the wreath on but did use my hot glue gun for the shells. This year Steve found a pretty shell on the beach and brought it to me thinking we would give it to Hazel or our friend's son who was with us. I however kept it because it was pretty and they could find their own. I loved the colors and thought this was a great way to put our memories on my wall.
I also included a couple of pieces of quahog shells. I always call them wampum and we always look for the ones with the most purple. Our friend's son got a beautiful piece this year. I was jealous, but found several other pieces.
I have also been picking up smaller rocks whenever we are at the beach. I wanted them to make more rock and shell pictures. When I saw the square and hexagon frames at Michaels I knew they would be perfect for my pictures. Now I have seen pictures like these sold in stores for around $15 each. This time I printed out some pictures of outlines of the animals and things I wanted to try. I did shells, sea life and birds. I started with a dolphin. I used the outline pictures to give me an idea of which rocks to use by placing them over the outline. Then I used those rocks roughly to create the pictures though I did some switching and such. I used regular craft glue to glue the rocks and shells onto the wooden frames.
Since the dolphin is long I used the hexagon frame. I ham happy with how it came out. Next I worked on the seahorse. I decided to use white stones and shell pieces for the seahorse so I painted one of the square frames with a blue acrylic paint, so the white would show up well.
I used a picture for the seahorse to really get the shape. I am happy how it came out but wish the shell pieces were a little flatter. The final picture I did is a hummingbird. I love hummingbirds. I tried to find reddish rocks to use for the throat so it is a male ruby-throated hummingbird. I used a piece of quahog shell for the tail.
What do you do with your beach treasures? I love the rock art because kids can also do them.
