‘shell game’ necklace and earrings

May 9th – part of my one-a-day projects

Picked up these marvelous shells on a beach in Costa Rica. My first thought was to pick the two closest in size to each other, and link them with brass to make earrings, and then use the rest as links in a necklace. As I expected they look good with sea glass, but I am not quite ready to experiment with drilling glass. However, in the process of looking for suitable sea glass ‘imitations’ I found these light blue beads strung on raffia, and I really like the way the raffia looks with the shells.

shell rings & beads test

As usual I gathered all the possibilities together. Not as usual I scanned them. One of the decisions was brass or copper or linen cord, and I definitely like the copper best. The problem with copper is that I wanted to use some chain and I don’t have any copper chain. So maybe I will try using cord, something I haven’t done much of. Below are a couple of ‘inspirations’ for this piece from Islita, a tiny art town on the Nicoya coast of Costa Rica.