Kids craft DIY: Sea shell turtle craft

We've been spending A LOT of time at the beach lately - this endless summer has us beach combing most weekends and some weekdays too! I think I prefer the beach more when the water is too cold to swim - the supervision is less strict when the kids aren't in the water and it actually allows us adults time to chill too. And chill we do - sifting through tiny shell remnants for cool shapes and colours, searching for sea glass (we're obsessed!), picking up fancy shells and little curios and just enjoying being by the sea.

So when the school was invited to create a turtle artwork or sculpture as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the plight of the sea turtles and how litter in our oceans is impacting the health of marine life, we had plenty of bits and pieces at the ready to get creative with. We decided little turtles made from shells would be cute so we played around with what we had at home (and made a special trip to the beach for fresh sand!)

We used a range of blue paints to cover MDF coasters for an "ocean" and sprinkled sand from Umina Beach over the bottom - and some glitter on the top! The girls chose a big shell each for the turtle shell and a smaller one as the head - the legs (flippers?) were broken shells and the tails were a bit of seaglass or another piece of shell. Immy drew a face on her little guy, added a tile we found at Patonga (I'm still not sure why!) and a starfish, while Layla added a tiny piece of coral and painted on bubbles.

Layla's turtle - how cool is the ikat-like pattern on this shell?

Immy's guy with a back-to-front head!

It was a simple afternoon craft and the girls loved it (I did too!), so I thought I'd share just in case you have a million beach finds sitting in a jar somewhere too! I've been getting creative with all of our finds lately - I'll share some more soon.