Sally Dyes Sea Shells

So like I said the other day when  I was down at our towns local construction site, they're rebuilding one of the old bridges and because of that part of the river bed got dug up. I found a couple shells that first day, but I went back a few days ago, armed with a bag and some wet paper towels to wipe my hands with once I was done. I came home with 110 shells, 3 pieces of quartz, and 3 pieces of polished glass.

Heres a group shot of the whole lot:

Some of these are absolutely amazing:

What I really need to do are take pictures of these mother of pearl pieces again because since I took these I have cleaned and polished all the shells so they look alot whiter, pearlier, and silverier...

Anyways, I was a tad bored the other night, probly because I was being a horrible blogger and not keeping up with my posting, but I decided to try and dye some of my shells. I figured they're about the same material as egg shells, so I should be able to acomplish this using food coloring and vinegar.

If you would like to try this yourself, you'll need:

Shells

Food coloring

Vinegar

Boiling water

(Note: for my shells I just used vinegar and dye, and this seems to actually dissolve some of the more delicate shells like the curly snail shells, so I would follow the box directions and use vinegar, plus boiling water, the dilution may eliminate this issue)

So mix the dye as the food coloring box directs for egg dyeing, I used some of the combination colors for mine, stormy blue, apricot, mint green, dusty rose, and neon purple. (Not necessarily pictured in that order)

Get some of your shells, I used only about a palm full, I didnt want to lose to many if it didn't work.

And place them in the dye! I left mine in for a couple hours, it's pretty much just like egg dyeing the longer you leave them the darker the dye color will be. Here's how they came out!

As you can see, some of the curly shells are a bit ate up and holey, but the mollusk shells held up great, and took color the best. Now that I have some dyed shells I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them, but I'm thinking maybe some windchimes, or hanging decorations....but I guess either way you'll just have to wait and see!