Coral Jewelry Pins

You know how I grabbed some sand from the beach in the Philippines and made a little trip souvenir with it?

I’ve created another small memento from our trip.  I made jewelry pins out of other things I picked up on the beach in Boracay Island, PHP.   Here’s the collection I brought home all laid out on my desk.

There’s some coral and a few pretty shells that I picked up right off the beach just because they had great shapes and seemed so perfect and smooth, two of the shells weren’t even damaged at all.  While, I think this sort of beachy collection would look really neat  as-is framed in a shadow box against a pretty background, I knew I wanted to create some sort of ‘dipped’ look with at least a few pieces of the coral.

I purchased jewelry pins at Michael’s (using my 50% off coupon!) and used gold leaf sheets (left over from this project) to create my new beach souvenirs.  I chose my two favorite shapes and then taped off the bottom halves of the coral.  I sprayed the top half with spray adhesive and layered on a small piece of gold leaf atop the sticky half.   After smoothing the gold leaf over the coral,  I brushed on some Polycrylic  (I used that because I already had it but any clear coat spray or polyurethane should work) to protect the gold leafing.   I used Gorilla Glue to glue the coral to the brass jewelry pin and allowed it to harden and dry.

I actually love adding pins like these to my jean jacket and sometimes have several different pins (flair!) on the pocket lapel at a time. The sheen of gold leaf (unmatched by paint) is absolutely gorgeous and the fact that it reminds me of a great trip just makes it even sweeter.

Do you have an item you collect from your travels?  Do you display souvenirs in your home? Now I need to move on to an idea I have for the shells.  I am eager to see how it turns out!
-J

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