Framed shells

The BEST frames for this purpose are THICK BORDERED ones with 4×6 or 5×7 openings; like the one above.

Sand the painted frame to distress it to your liking.

Play around with the positioning of your starfish on the frame.  The points are different lengths and sometimes bent in or out a bit.  You just want to have as many points as possible touching your frame.  On this one all but the top point hit the frame.  Put a dot of glue where the frame and starfish meet and let dry.  I use tacky glue.

BE SURE your frame has whatever hardware it’s going to need to be hung BEFORE you attach your starfish.  Kinda difficult to hammer anything in once you attach that starfish.

Here are some smaller ones I did with 5″ starfish; again no backing in the frame.

This one would be a bit ‘sturdier’, mounted on a repainted vintage wood tray.

On this one, the frame opening was just too big even for these giant scallop shells.  My solution, of course was to just add a backing.  Not just ANY backing though; a SANDPAPER backing!

This little wicker frame also has a sandpaper backing.

This set of mis-matched but similar frames all have the sand paper backing too.

Frames don’t have to MATCH perfectly to be used as a set.

A smaller set of ‘floating’ fingerling starfish.

The starfish usually work well hung vertically or horizontally in the frames.

As simplistic as this one looks with three floating fingerling starfish; I probably spent an HOUR positioning and repositioning all the various starfish I had in my stash to find just the right ones to fit perfectly in this tall skinny frame!

ALL of the framed shell pictures shown ARE for sell, either in my space at Stars Antique Mall in Portland, Oregon; or in my on-line etsy shop.