Seashell Painting - Fun Activity!

Seashell painting, anyone? I just couldn't resist these fabulous seashell painting activities I was browsing through last time, and now we have a home full of cute, colorful shells! Have a look and use the idea for an easy toddler painting activity!

Seashell Painting

Seashell painting activities are fun! Summer-themed crafts for kids that can be done without preparation, and by all ages. Have a look!

How to Paint seashells

If you want to keep your seashell painting permanent, use acrylic paint. For process art, durability does not play a decisive role, so you can use watercolor paint too.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED for seashell painting:

• your favorite type of paint (might be plain watercolors!)
• color mixing tray (you can even use shells as a painter's palette - scroll down for this super handy idea!
• at least a handful of seashells
• a paintbrush or two

As always, the kid was excited about the opportunity to paint! We used MALA kid's paint from Ikea - they are washable, but if you'd want to use your painted seashells in a wet place (water-based sensory bins), you should opt for acrylic paint...

How did it turn out? We got a plateful of beautiful and colorful kids art creations.

And now we just need to decide on one of the ways to use the painted shells. A dream catcher, maybe?

How To Use Painted Seashells

PROJECTS WE MIGHT USE OUR SHELLS for:

• use them in a summer-themed sensory bin (our toddler would LOVE it!)
• have some fun with counting activities! Any form, perhaps even when playing with the giant dice - we counted with dice and blueberries some time ago (link)
• make a summer collage out of seashells,
• DIY  a picture frame

or, my personal favorite:

• drill tiny holes in them so we can make a soothing wind-chime. It would be perfect for the coffee corner on our balcony...

Or we just might do all of these activities!  Now, another idea you can use, and it's a pretty practical one:

Use seashells as painter's pallette

Here is a bonus idea to use seashells for crafting: here, the seashells were used in a different way than you'd think: seashells as painter's palette

We did this last year when painting with kids at the seaside: it was my two nieces' smart idea to use seashells to mix colors, in place of the color mixing palette, and it was just perfect!

Bring it up a notch and turn it into a great counting activity for toddlers, like we did here!

For which of these projects would you prefer to use painted seashells? Find more ideas here: