Beach Sea Shell Souveneir Mosaic

This past weekend I went on vacation to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina in the Atlantic Breeze Oceania resort. We started collecting shells in the morning on the shore when I came up with this art project. I love elephants, I have a mild obsession with how adorable they are so when I started picking up these gray oyster shells, thinking of what I could possibly do with all of these shells we were picking up, I decided an elephant mosaic would be the perfect way to use these shells and remember this vacation.

Heres how you do it!
Materials:

• Sea shells
• A hammer
• A Canvas Panel (meaning the canvas is not raised and stretched over wood but lying flat)
• A pencil 
• Mosaic Grout (I used Mosaic Mercantile Mosaic Grout white sanded, don't get the premixed kind, get the powdered one that you have to mix)
• A painter's brush (the kind you use to paint walls)
• Glue (I just used Elmer's glue)

Steps:

1. Collect shells. 
• Because I did an elephant I got a lot of oyster shells for the gray and then shells that weren't too rounded. 
• The beautiful thing about making mosaics is that you can pick up all of the broken pieces nobody else wants.
2. Develop your design on the canvas.
• I drew the elephant outline with a pencil on the canvas panel.
3. Break the shells.
• I took a hammer to the sea shells and broke them into pieces.
4. Fill the outline with shells.
5. Glue the shells to the canvas
• I took the lid off the glue and used a little crappy paint brush to paint the backs of the shells with glue.
6. Fill the rest of the canvas with shells and glue them down,
7. Mix the grout.
• I took a measuring cup of water to add a little at a time.
• I mixed it enough with a plastic spoon to where there is a thick consistency like concrete.
8. Paint over the canvas with the grout.
• Once the glue has dried paint over the shells with the grout using the painter's brush.
• I just scooped a bit of grout on the brush at a time and covered as much of the shells and cracks as possible, don't worry about covering the shells.
9. Let stand for 20 minutes, allowing the shells to set.
10. Go over the shells with a wet sponge to get the grout off of them.
• After I got the initial grout off I went over it again with a Q-tip to get the sand and grout off of the shells.
11. Seal it with gloss.