Decorating with SeaShells "On the Cheap"!

If you've seen the movie "Something's Gotta Give", you may remember Diane Keaton in the role of a playwrite who has a fabulous beach house on Long Island. You may also recall that she had bowls of seashells and white beach pebbles scattered throughout her home. These bowls looked great and gave a casual and elegant beach flair to the airy rooms. This is a terrific idea, easy to do and is very inexpensive! Nearly everyone has a collection of prized seashells from their beach vacations, collected as pretty memories of a wonderful trip. Most of the time these shells are tucked away in a corner somewhere, catching dust. Bring them out of hiding today and show off your rich treasures from the sea!

Start by cleaning your shells. Mix equal parts of household bleach and water and let the seashells soak in this solution for at least 30 minutes (more if necessary). If there are barnacles or stains, clean with an old toothbrush and soak again. Rinse your seashells thoroughly and let dry.

Now the fun begins! Choose a pretty glass bowl, mason jar, or any glass container you like. Combine seashells you think will look nice together and place them in the container. Spend time arranging the shells to suit you, checking to make sure you like the way they look through the glass, as well as from the top. I like to use different combinations of seashells, mixing softly muted pastel shades with creamy white, in multiple sizes, but you may want to use seashells of the same size, with similar colors so that there's a uniform running motif in your containers to match the decor of the room - mix them up in a variety of ways to achieve the look you want. If you are into having scented potpourris around your home, you might want to add a few drops of your favorite scented oils to the shell bowls - instant seaside aromatherapy!

Another idea you might want to try in decorating with your seashells, especially using larger, more unusual specimen, is to place them singly on a mirror as a centerpiece or on a shelf for a unique focal point. If you have a special piece of driftwood, this could become part of your design. You may also arrange several shells together, but always decorate using odd numbers, even amounts tend to look unnatural and your goal is to give your home an organic, beach flair. What's nice about this method of decorating is that you can change it whenever you want a new look - at least until you run out of seashells!

Have fun, play and give new life to those dull hidden seashells! Sometimes we pull out a shell and wonder why we decided to keep it. Most likely you originally saw your seashell when it was still wet from the ocean, when the hues were brought out by the water. If you want to bring back the color in these seashells, you can brush on a thin coat of crystal clear nail polish and let dry, usually in just 15 minutes. This will give your seashells a pretty sheen and permanently accentuate the rainbow of colors that first caught your eye and made you lean down to pick the shell up and take it home. When your run out of shells (not possible in our house!), you'll be chomping at the bit to get back to the beach so you can collect more seashells for your decorating projects and you'll be giving the set decorators of Diane's movie beach house a run for their money!

To see an example of my seashell decor, check out SheaShells SeaShells and take a peek at my newest Driftwood Centerpiece with seashells, waving fronds and silk and dried flowers, created with the colors of Key West and Sanibel Island and my bedroom drapery as inspiration.

Play with your Seashells - you'll feel like a kid on the beach again make something pretty too!

SeaShell Memories

My earliest memories with my family always seemed to include collecting seashells. Throughout my meanderings here, I'll share some of my SeaShell Memories...

Yep, that's me!

Today I'm thinking of the days when my family would pick blackberries on the bay side of the beach in Rye, NY. It was beautiful then, peaceful and clean, a rare gentle breeze moving through the trees, relief from the hot stillness of August.....I remember.....there's the tiny lap of water on the dark coarse sand, littered with the tiniest of seashells.....joyful sounds of screaming teens on the roller coaster across the way.....sweet cotton candy perfume drifting through the scent of the salty bay, my Daddy's Old Spice and smoke from his eternal cigarette.

After a lunch of lukewarm hot-dogs-from-home on soggy slices of white bread wrapped in newspaper and aluminum foil, my cousins and I would pull on our long-sleeved going-home shirts and pants over sticky bathing suits and bravely march into the brambled berry bushes separating the parking lot from the narrow beach, racing to see who could pick the most berries. In among my bag of berries were perfect tiny seashells...snail shells, bitty clams, mussels. They looked like little pearls and gems to me and I would tell myself stories about a mermaid's necklace. We'd have to be coaxed out by the adults with promises of visits to the funhouse and jostling in the bumper cars. I would always lag behind, looking for the real pearls among the seashells and picking up even more shell treasures and berries before finally emerging. We would tumble out of the thicket hysterical with laughter, covered in berry juice and blood, arguing loudly over who had picked the most berries. The adults would smilingly take us over to the beach side where the ocean would wash us salty clean again.

At the end of the long day, after the rides, haunted house, all the junk food we could stuff ourselves with, tired and droopy, I would sit in the back seat of my parents' rumbling giant Buick. My big bag of blackberries and seashells proudly next to me on the bench seat the size of my bed, my parents talking softly in the front, I'd gorge until I fell asleep, dreaming of undersea palaces. Waking up next morning with stained fingers and the smell of blackberry pancakes, creating mosaics of seashells that covered the whole kitchen table - fish, flowers, mermaids, rainbows, butterflies...seashell drawings from the happy heart of a little girl. Good memories these.

Those days on the beach with my cousins were the seeds of my lifelong love affair with seashells. To see what that little girl creates with seashells today, please visit SheaShells SeaShells & Silks