Creating Keepsakes and Gifts with Sand and Shells

With a few inexpensive-to-free items, you can create some nice gifts and keepsakes for your family.

You will need sand. I live on an island, so I was able to get some different-colored and -sized grains of sand. Different beaches give you different kinds of sand.
If you are not located near a beach you can always go to your closest craft store and find some varieties of craft sand. You can even buy colored sand, although I prefer the more natural colors.

You will need glue. I use Tacky glue, which seems to hold the best.

Also you will need shells. Now some craft stores may carry these, unfortunately I even have a hard time finding shells in a store here, so most of mine I have found on the beach or bought at a tourist store. Now days though if you are reading this you have access to the Internet and you can easily find them available to buy online, usually they are very affordable. Be sure when you are buying your shells you have an idea of what size you will need, depending on size of frame or box you plan on decorating.

I started with some small basic boxes from our craft store. Decide on a theme you would like to go with. For one of mine I outlined a little footprint onto the top of the box, and then used a paintbrush to paint on the glue in the footprint shape. Working a bit quickly so the glue doesn't dry, pour your sand onto the glue area and then shake off the excess. You should have a nice little footprint in sand now. Wait for this to dry then go back and paint the surrounding areas with glue and pour different colors of sand for the background.

When your sand is dry on your box or frame you can now glue on some nice shell accents.

You are even able to make little shapes out of the shells you may find. I was able to use some of the very smallest shells I had to make little flowers by hot gluing four little shells into a flower shape and adding another tiny shell in the middle. This makes a really cute little flower shape. I've also seen some people glue their shells into the shapes of turtles and angels. You are only limited by your imagination.

Your sand can also be any shape you like because you are painting with the glue what shape you like then adding the sand after.

You can even make nice Christmas ornaments by hot gluing ribbon to a nice sized shell and there you go, its ready for the tree. They make nice Christmas gifts or favors for a Christmas party.