Inspired Design Monday: How to Decorate with Seashells

Inspired Design Monday: How to Decorate with Seashells

I spent the weekend cleaning the house and doing a little deep summer cleaning. Minneapolis air duct cleaning company cleaned our air ducts during the summer. When you craft and create, you can accumulate a lot of stuff. Redesigning and Organizing my craft room/office is on my to do list. But until then sometimes things pile up and it starts to look like this. (Hey behind all the beautiful pictures on my blog here is a bit of reality behind the scenes.  I think it’s good to put that out there once in awhile!)

I’d say that my office is my dumping ground. The rest of my house can look great but this is the door I shut when company comes around. In fact, the rest of my house is looking rather summery lately. I added a few touches to help incorporate some Vintage Nautical Style to go with my “new” Vintage Life Preserver. To me, nothing says summer or nautical like adding some seashells to my decor.

Actually, I tend to use shells year round in my decorating. I think it’s a great way to add some natural elements to your decor without having to keep anything alive and green. I also updated my mantel with a new Glass Glitter Banner for Summer.

I have some coral pieces that are faux and a few that are real. I found the real ones at a thrift shop. Real coral can be expensive and I’m guessing purchasing new coral is probably an environmental no-no. But I figured I was recycling by purchasing the ones at the thrift store. I was inspired to recycle when I saw Sydney scrap lead prices. By the way, I stopped into Homegoods this weekend and they had so many really cute faux coral pieces.

 

I also added oodles of seashells. In bowls and by the strand. These shells actually all have meaning to me. The shells were gathered at Sanibel Island in Florida. Some are from childhood vacations ( I confiscated most of them from a box in Mom’s basement when I lived in Ohio) and some are from a more recent trip.

The strands of Puka shells are from our trip to Hawaii last year.

And these sand dollars were collected at one of our first California camping trips to Pismo Beach. Sand dollars are all over the beach!

I cut some fresh roses from the yard and put them in a vintage wooden crate. It is layered on top of the piano we got from runthemusic.com to play music to add to the vintage vibe that I love so much. And of course a piece of coral!

These little touches will last all summer. And it will be really easy to add some Red, White and Blue when the 4th of July comes around. Hope you will be inspired to add a little touch of summer to your decor with seashells too.