DIY Seashell Picture Frame

Have you ever taken a trip to the beach and taken a cute sand photo and collected some shells?
Well, I have a small project for you!
About two days before we moved from California back to Utah we decided to go to the beach one more time. It was 'our beach' because we went to the same spot every time.

We knew it was our last trip to there for a while...maybe a couple of years...so we wanted to somehow remember it.

We did the classic footprints in the sand of each member of our little family. (Yes, we had our then 2 month old do a little chubby footprint as well :) )

While we lived in California we went to the beach MANY times and my son loved collecting seashells.

Over time a bunch of the shells broke or got lost, so I wanted a way to keep the shells intact and also display our cute picture.

This is what I came up with.

I first uploaded our footprint picture to Picasa and added the wording 'October 2013' (which was obviously when the picture was taken), I then printed the picture out.

We had this old black picture frame that was sitting in a box for years, so I didn't mind if it got a little ruined (in case gluing the shells didn't work out so well).

I let my son place the shells all around the frame in any order he wanted, and then using a hot glue gun, we attached the shells to the frame.

A cool fact about the shells is they all came from the same beach, the one we went to every time, but they are all from different visits. So it captures even more memories :)

I think the whole craft took maybe 30 minutes or so, and I loved how it turned out! 

Our downstairs bathroom has a beach-y type theme, so I will be hanging this picture in there.