Mon Petit Coquillage

Ever since Maya over at Completely Coastal did a post about the art of attaching shells to objects entitled It's Called Coquillage, I was anxious to find an object suitable to use with my collection of tiny shells.

Most of these shells were given to me by a little neighbor girl named Jewelia, when she moved away a few years ago. See that tiny little starfish in the center? I just found that in this collection today, and it's a wonder how it survived in one piece with all the others.

I started on this project right after dinner last night, and added the tiny starfish when I came across it today.

I only added shells to the areas that you would not need to grab when installing this sconce.

I thought about adding some wired sea glass to hang down from the lights, but I had some extra chandelier pendants that were a lot quicker to hang.

Although this sconce is still wired for electricity, I just tucked the wires into the back and hung it on my wall.

This is what the sconce looked like before, when I found it at a local thrift store for just $2.50.

All I did was coat it with a layer of creme colored latex paint and as soon as it was dry, I applied just a few shells with a hot glue gun.

In case you want to do this too, it only took me about 5 minutes to paint, and about 30 minutes to apply the shells.

I bet it would take longer to have it installed to use with electricity though, so I'm calling this one complete as is.