My bff travels to seas a lot and brings a lot of shells and clams back home. Knowing that i like to craft, she gave them to me to think about something to turn them into gifts.
After lots of inspiration on Pinterest, watching tutorials, and some improvisation, i ended up painting them like sea bowls, one on a stand, and one as a closing version with sky and clouds as well.
I originally wanted to dye some resin blue and make it a resin filled sea with that trick of white resin and hot air gun to make a sea foam, but i didn't have the white pigment nor air gun, so i opted to try and paint it all instead.
I am a digital cartoon artist, so yes, i have skills for drawing, but painting? That's a big nightmare for me haha! Just the brushes bending, doing what they want, adding amount of paint as they please and simply not behaving was always a death of me! 😭
But painting sea somehow turned out to be actually very easy once i got the grip of it. Maybe because i didn't have to draw anything detailed and just dabbed waves in and blended premade basic colors. But still i love how i managed to create especially the white foam.
The golden edges were the biggest challenge though. I saw people using gold gell pens or already premade gold paint. I only had gold pigment powder. I ended up mixing it with a bit of varnish. It didn't want to stay mixed properly and made a gold crust on the varnish's surface, but in the end that was actually a helpful mistake that made it stick to the shell very well haha!
Then the pebbles and details were glued on with hot gun and super glue before coated with varnish again.
Either way I am absolutely planning to paint more shells now!