DIY Sea Glass Vases

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Things I love. Our family’s hair messy and wavy, salty smells, riding waves, lazy days, even sand in my suit because it means I am on my very favorite vacation. The beach!

I wish our family could live there (on vacation of course) all year round but we have to come home and work. Darn mortgage payment! And college tuition. Oh, and 3 weddings (very, very far) down the road.

Our family is made up of beach combers and boogie boarders. The beach combers look for sharks teeth, sand dollars, shells, and sea glass. It is amazing all the things that the ocean will turn up for us to investigate and learn from during a week long trip.

My favorite is sea glass. This summer while visiting the cousins in Ohio I decided to make Grandma’s birthday presents early. Thanks to Pinterest and Goodwill our 6-pack sat down and made Sea Glass Vases for Grandma to display the lovely flowers she grows. Sorry for the picture quality, I was in a kitchen with no windows. So, first off go out and get some vases (or if you’re a hoarder like me get them from your basement) and wash them good and dry. Since I was not at my home our girls each got to pick out one at Goodwill and they thought it was so.much.fun!

Get your ingredients together:

Elmer’s glue
Dawn dish soap
foam brushes
Food coloring

I bought this one because it seemed the most “beachy” to me. Plus, it was the most girly colors for our 6-pack. Next up mix 2 parts glue to 1 part water. You might have to add a bit more glue (not much) to have it be a nice smooth but easily paintable consistency. Add a drop of Dawn and mix it up again. This by the way is the recipe for homemade Modge-Podge. How about that? I first learned that this summer, I must be living under a rock! Choose the color you want, you can also mix colors if that is your thing, and add a few drops until you are happy with how it looks. We stuck with blue/green together, and pink and purple alone. 6 girls 🙂

If doing this project with kids cover the surface before starting. If it is just you doing it you probably only need a newspaper because this is a super easy craft. I had girls ranging from 9 down to 4 so it was messier than normal.

And that was what the blue/green looked like when we started. Coat the outside of your vase with your mixture, you don’t have to do it very thick and we only did 1 coat. We tried to apply the coat evenly but when your painters look like this…

it may not be the most even of application. That is fine though because they turned out perfectly! I didn’t notice any obvious imperfection and if I did Grandma would have wanted to keep it just the way it was!

I let them dry and sprayed with a polyurethane. The only reason I did that was because I hoped it would keep the paint from scratching off as easy. We weren’t there to give the gorgeous sea glass vases to Grandma for her birthday but we got this picture from Ohio, she loved them!