Beach and Shell Crafts: our July Interest Table

Our July Interest Table has a big beach theme at the moment: red striped paper reminiscent of Victorian Changing Tents, our latest Roll-a-Sandcastle pictures, a framed photograph I have of our feet in the sand when The Girls were smaller. We have some shells and I created a fake beach scene using blue tissue paper and sandpaper. The tissue paper packaged our message-in-a-bottle invitation to test out Venture Cove which is also on the table along with a small bucket and spade and some sand toys in the shape of fish and shells.

Our Hobbycraft Tree has gold medallions- treasure hanging on it- prizes from Sports Day- together with some hanging starfish we made from sandpaper based on a craft I saw at Meet the Dubiens recently. Whilst I was on a roll with the sandpaper, I also adapted a bauble idea I saw on Red Ted Art and made hanging 3D sandcastles that also hang from the branches.

Now we also have our Hawaiian Leis on the beach too, and we also have hanging jellyfish that Dimples made at school as well as a handprint crab. There are some books I have on Oceans and Seas, and I have a couple of fabulous Ladybird I Can Read Books that indeed I used to learn to read when I was a cild, which have a beach theme.

We have also been using some shells for printing, which proved great fun last year. We get a lot of oyster shells wash up on our local beaches as we are down the coast from Whitstable, which is famed for it’s oysters. I collected them with a few projects in mind but the girls had better ideas. They dipped them in paint to do the shell paintings: we used metallic paint on black paper which looks striking I think.Once the shells were dried, and rather than waste the paint-dipped-shells, I stuck them to a frame with my glue gun and the shell-covered-frame made the perfect gift for a friend.

I showed the crafts in a Google Shell Hangout recently hosted by Red Ted Art in which we talked about crafts that you can make with shells. Check out the great ideas featured:

Kids Chaos told about a family project adding shells to watercolour pictures.

Imagination Tree made some pretty salt-dough shell imprints

Zing Zing Tree shared her many shell ideas, including shell teacups, shell people and sweet little shell hairclips.

Crystal’s Tiny Treasures made a fabulous shell necklace

Me and My Shadow made some shell-covered elephants and treasure boxes

 

And of course we have a couple of shell-related crafts:

exploring shapes through shells

shell porthole pictures