InspiredDo you collect seashells while wading and walking along the shores? And then you find yourself back at home with piles and piles of sea shells. Eventually collecting dust? Looking at them trying to recapture the nothingness of vacation and the beauty they held when you uncovered them from the sand. And now back at home, wondering what to do with them.
String 'em and hang 'em.
I had gone to the craft store with gusto. Last September. Found some rings and string and came home to make a layered mobile. Sorted through the shells, picked some beads and strung 'em up. But the tiered mobile idea kind of got complicated. Oh, for half a year or more, they looked like this, hanging off of a curtain hook, one metal ring with shells dangling down. Not bad, but not what I had envisioned.
Recently Lucy has been eating the shells. She knows she isn't supposed to. She puts them in her mouth and walks around and laughs when I get it out. This is usually a sign that she wants real food. They were becoming a nuisance, the basket of shells that is, stashed on a lower shelf in the dining room. That issue, along with my half-assed (but well received) post at the PWMS party, my long list of half finished projects and the rain, oh mighty rain ... well it was time to cross something off my list.
So we went to the store to buy some picture frames for some little cat pictures we picked up along the Seine. The frames were neither on sale nor doing anything aesthetically for me. We left the store empty handed and in drizzle. By the time we got home it was raining. It was crystal clear now, I needed to deal with the shells and mobile idea.
Tray & basket of shells. (from Outerbanks North Carolina... 3 years ago. A couple from Nova Scotia coast line, 2 summers ago)
Some hemp rope, a metal ring and some beads. Carefully selected shells with holes in them.
One of the showstoppers, 6+ months ago, was the metal ring. I didn't know how I was going to hold the strings on or in place. One day I saw a picture of rope wrapped around a ring. Maybe that incident was what brought the project to the forefront of my mind. SO I wrapped the rope around, and around, making a knot every 10 or so loops, to hold it in place
And finished and hung on a hook that was already in the porch ceiling. Forget complicated, this simple thing is pretty enough, hung and may even rattle if the wind is strong enough.
I ended up looping only half of the ring with hemp. Gravity can keep it tight.
Click here and here for some Nova Scotia coastline
So cute!
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It ended up very pretty! It's lovely hanging over your moon chair. I'd like to sit there and read.
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