Being a bit of a home décor junkie, I've always got time to help a friend decorate (or redecorate.) So when my friend bought a beach house on the Gulf Coast this summer, I had to take a trip down to help her decorate the place. The house had come mostly furnished in teal and white, so we decided to run with the beach theme and match what we already had. Seashells immediately came to mind, but we wanted to do something a bit different than the standard decorations you see in most houses along the coast. Here are a few things we came up with.
Seashell window box planters
Not so surprisingly, many tourist shops along the coast sell giant conch seashells. While I'm not sure how you would get these on a plane (they're roughly the size of a small coffee can,) they worked great as planters. To give the outside of the house a funkier style, I attached three conch seashells to a reclaimed wood plank. I then attached the whole piece underneath the window and filled each shell with small tropical plants. It was a quick and cheap way to create a unique window box looking planter.
Seashell filled vases
To bring some of the lush tropical coloring into the house, my friend had been cutting off fresh flowers and placing them in vases along her kitchen counter. The result was beautiful but a little plain. To jazz up the clear glass vases, I washed and dried several small white seashells. I then painted the seashells in teal and purple and added them to the vases.
Seashell shadow boxes
I had seen seashells centered in shadow box frames in a few other beach houses, and while I like the look, it wasn't in the modern style we were going for. So I came up with a different way to add seashells to shadow boxes. First I purchased several small shadow boxes with white frames. Next, I found seashells that would fit inside the frames and had different shapes. Finally, I used clippings from Mississippi travel magazines to wrap each seashell. After gluing on the clippings I coated them in sealant and glued them onto the center of the frame baking. While they still look like seashells in a shadow box frame, the magazine clippings give them a burst of color and add a bit of local style to the room.
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