When we went to Sanibel this year for our beach vacation, we all spent lots of time combing the beaches for shells. Little Jo and I had one kind of shell that we particularly loved to spot. We call them “butterfly shells” because — you guessed it — they look like butterflies. Perhaps one of you can tell me exactly what kind of shell they are, but when we find them opened up on the beach, but still hinged together, they look just like butterflies to us. And they are SO tiny that we just love them to pieces.
After a great “crop” of butterfly shells this year, I decided to (carefully!) bring some home and do a craft with them. I made a simple greeting card with a flock of butterflies on it that I ended up sending to Jo last month to cheer her up. It was super easy to do, too!
I started by cutting a piece of watercolor paper down to 8.5″ x 5.5″, which is the perfect size to fold in half and stick in a standard 5 3/4″ x 4 3/8″ invitation envelope.
Then I got out some watercolors to paint the card. You’ll note that I didn’t use fancy watercolors, either. Just plain old, kid-friendly, 99-cents-on-sale watercolors, which work just fine. I used some blue and green and painted a gentle wash of color on the front of the card.
Then I grabbed one of my favorite adhesives ever, giant 3-D Zots adhesive dots. I love these things because they are big and thick and work like blobs of hot glue that will stick anything down. They are particularly good for this project because the shells are hollow underneath, and the big Zot fills the space wonderfully.
Before I did any gluing, I took my little butterfly shells and arranged them on the card in a way that I liked. Then I took the Zots and cut them down so they were a bit smaller, so they’d fit in the tiny shells.
I put a piece of Zot on the back of each half of the shell and then pressed the shell into place. If you don’t have Zots or something similar, you could use hot glue here, but it’s much messier!
In just a few minutes, the card was done. I stuck it in the envelope and mailed it to Jo. I think next year I may collect more butterfly shells and make some art I can frame.
4 comments so far:
Hi guys, these shells are from the family called Tellinidae and are called tellins OR they are coquina clams (family Donacidae) they are no more than 1″ in size and are related to tellins which can be up to 4.5″. Either way, they are really pretty and I too, love picking them up from the beach when they are still connected. I’m sure you’ve figured out that they are very fragile and can be broken off from one another easily……that happens to me more often than not!
Interesting comment by vsprague48. I grew up in Florida and we always called them “periwinkles”—which I now know was not correct. We did, however, called the broken up shells that make up many of the beaches “coquina”. Oh, the memories!
I grew up in Florida too and we called them coquina shells. When a wave washed over the live ones, they would quickly dig down to hide again. It was fun to watch how quickly they would disapear. You can gather these live ones to eat by cooking them similarly to clams, but it takes a lot more of them!
Thanks so much for the shell info. I knew you guys would know the answers!