The waves wash up so many beautiful treasures and I just can't  help but take them with me. After a while i'm forced to come up with ideas of what to do with all the shells, sea glass, and other beach finds. I literally have shells everywhere in my apartment! I love the beach and I love the the outdoors and having the elements of nature inside makes me happy. I love to turn a corner in my apartment or look down to the floor and see the perfect curvature of a spiraled shell or the beautiful frosted turquoise color of beach glass. It just puts me in a great mood and inspires me.

Filling glass containers with all size shells was my first reaction. I've filled mason jars, honey jars, perfume bottles, and even petri dishes! Shell collecting has become an easy and economic way to decorate.

The pink and purple shell fragments are from a trip to Costa Rica I took last year with my boyfriend. Some shells in the pictures are from the beaches of Northern California but most shell I found right across the street in Rockaway Beach New York. 

The original idea of the petri dishes was to put both sides together so that the shells were inside and I could dust the outside but I just have too many shells that I want to display so the lids got used as containers as well. I bought all different sizes off eBay. (I'm kind of obsessed with eBay. Its like a yard sale or vintage store that delivers right to your door! I love it!)

Another idea I had was to encase the shells in the petri dishes and seal them closed, then tie a ribbon around the outside and make Christmas ornaments but I found something else better for that.

I learned around gourding as a craft from my Aunt in California. You can do all sort of cool things with them. Most people carve them out and make decorative bowls out of them and stain or paint them. My aunt has made some beautiful gourds some with braided leather rims and others with studs that were countersunk into them. I tried to get creative and drilled tiny holes in patterns into the hollowed out gourd and made a hole in the bottom to insert a flameless candle. It was a test run and lit up how I wanted but I need to perfect the design of the hole patterns. I'll post it as soon as I get to it.

I like the mixing of the shells with the wood looking gourd. Its nice to have different elements come together. This came about just to save space. I do lots of crafts and my craft/art cabinet doesn't always have room for larger supplies like large gourds.

Living at the beach I'm always finding all kinds of cool shells. Whenever I take my dog down to play or just go for a walk on the beach, I always find myself looking down hoping to find some sort of treasure. My eye searches to pick out these tiny spiraled shells among the common shells. These ones are all smaller than a dime. I love how perfectly they are formed and how detailed they are in their mini state. This is the perfect time of the year to find large and micro shells. Its off season and that means I pretty much have the beach to myself. More shells for me! Ha. 

The other day I found this awesome large shell formation that has all these crevices or perfect potholes. I automatically thought it would be a great way to display all of the tiny shells i've found. I just love how it make each shell standout.