Turn Your Vacation Shells Into Cute Shell Critters
When we go to the beach for vacation, my family loves to collect shells. We scour the beach, especially at low tide, and find beautiful treasures to take home. This year at our beach trip we got a whole bunch of great shells to take home. They provide a wonderful memory of the fun trip, plus they can be utilized to make a bunch of cute crafts. My favorite thing to do with the shells is to create a fun seashell menagerie full of cute beach shell critters.
Materials
- Assorted shells
- Hot glue
- Googly eyes
- gems (optional)
Making a Shell Clam
To make a cute clam you need two shells that are right about the same size, and then two small shells to act as feet. Then get some googly eyes that will work in proportion to the shell size you have. Next heat your glue gun, and add glue to the front top of one of the eyes. Place the eye firmly against the inside of the top shell right at the front. Repeat with the other eye, and then glue the bottoms into the bottom shell.
After the eyes are done, glue the back hinges of the two shells together. Then glue the two small shells onto the bottom of the clam as feet, so your cute little clam can stand up on a shelf or table. Now you have a clam which is a great memory of your vacation.
Making a Shell Butterfly
For the butterfly, you need two matching shells (clam shells work great), a spiral shell or another elongated shell, and some small shell for the head. Then a few pretty gemstones make great adornment for the wings.
First glue the wings together where they touch, and glue the spiral shell on top of the first point of intersection. Glue the tiny shell on the blunt side of the spiral shell as the head, and your butterfly is done. Lastly you can put the gemstones on the wings with a little hot glue, and end up with a cute little critter.
Making the bee
This one is the product of just the right shells, so you may not be able to create it the same. I think part of the fun of making these critters is looking at what shells you have and finding the animal they were destined to be. I wanted to make an owl, and a turtle, but my shells were not right for those creatures. Anyway for the bee I took the center of a conch shell that was just the right shape for a flower, and I glued it into a hole in a mussel shell. The hole was there, and the stem of the conch fit it perfectly, so I went with that as my base and flower. Then an oval snail shell made a great bee body, and I glued two matching shells on as wings. Last, I broke a spiral shell, and used just the tip as a stinger. The bee is one of a kind and I think it is just the cutest of the bunch. You can of course take the idea and make your own bee and build a shell flower for it to sit on.
Making the Chicken
The cute chicken was done completely by my daughter. To make a chicken you need five large shells, two need to be close to the same size, two small shells for feet, a spiral shell for the beak, and googly eyes. Start by gluing the two shells that are similar in size together like they were a closed clam. That is the body. Next, glue the body onto another large shell as the base. Then add two small shells as the feet. Add another large shell on top as the head and put your spiral shell as the beak. Now add the eyes so your chicken can see. Last, glue another large shell on the back for the tail feathers. If you want a rooster, you can add another small shell to make a comb.
I hope you can use these beach shell critters as a jump start to create some great animals of your own. My daughter and I had a lot of fun making these cute animals. In addition to being fun to make, these crafts are unique gifts. We already gave the butterfly away as a gift to a friend. She loves butterflies and thought this shell one was neat. Plus if you don’t make it to the beach, or cannot find shells, Amazon has a bunch of shells to start you off.
Which Critter will you make first?
Get your supplies from Amazon to get you started:
Hot glue gun googly eyes shells