Bringing my latest idea to life....

​I wanted to incorporate the seashells I have with my idea of creating Christmas trees. I took it one step further and used an idea that someone else was doing and I added sea glass to the seashell idea. 

The tall tree on the left, although it looks pretty good in the picture, is actually quite misshapen on the other side, but for a first attempt it looks okay. This tree was made using my cone shape method. As shown on the right, first I found all the pieces I wanted to use and laid them out in the shape. Then I took each shell and had to find an appropriate piece of glass to go in the hole. I then glued the glass in and laid it back into position on the pattern, adding some glue to where the shells touch and continued until it was all filled with glass and back in place. Once it dried enough I wrapped it into the cone shape, added more glue to the shells, held it in place with a lot of painters tape and let it dry overnight. As I said earlier it's a wonky shape but I've learned a lot about this method and will probably try it again with my improvements to see how a second one will turn out.

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The smaller tree, on the right in the picture above, was made with my stacked method. I used a different type of shell but one which also has a nature occurring hole in it. The first step with this method was to collect all the shells I wanted to use and find appropriate pieces of glass to glue into each hole. Once they had all dried I started building my stacked tree. This method is much easier than a cone tree but unfortunately finding enough similar shells in varying sizes will be a challenge. I really like this style and will make more of them with the shells I have. I think in the future I will only use dark green glass in the holes because as you can see from the picture on the right the light green just looks white when the light is shining through it.

​​I'm thinking that I will have to take another look at all the shells I have to see if there are more varieties or pieces that I can use to make trees. I might have a real "tree farm" available with many styles to choose from by the time next market season comes along. 

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