Bedazzled Abalone Shells

I recently bought this shoe box full of random bits of jewelry for a mere $5.00. It has been awhile since I've bought any substantial amount of jewelry-- so I was jazzed to go through it.

I would say the container had about 50% usable items and the other 50% will get tossed into a plastic bag to be sold at a later date. One persons "junk" is always someone else's treasure. I was surprised at all the strands of rhinestones that were in the container.... sparkly... I always find uses for strands of rhinestones (a.k.a. rhinestone bracelets) Here is one of two drawers I have some of my stash of rhinestones in....

Along with the shoe box full of jewelry I also purchased a few small abalone shells a for $1.00 (for the lot)

Even if the edges are jagged, I still buy them. I can easily fix any jagged bits with small snips from a pair of wire cutters.
I bought these little shells with the sole purpose of "bedazzling" them... I pulled out some rhinestone bracelets to use and got busy.
They are super easy to make. Firstly, I make one cut on the bracelets to create a strand instead of a continuous circle. Next, I use a pin to pull up the loop of the elastic in the bracelet so that I can pull it out completely. Once that is done, it is ready to be glued to the shell. I use E6000 glue to adhere the rhinestones to the abalone shell. I run a line of glue around the entire shell where I want the rhinestones to be set. I find that doing this allows the E6000 glue to set up ever so slightly to make it a thicker glue. If you don't, the E6000 glue is a runny consistency, and makes it harder to keep what your gluing from sliding around.
Its just a matter of placing the rhinestones into the glue and adding a bit of bling to the shell and setting it aside to dry.

 These abalone shells are very small, I've placed rings inside of them to give you an idea of just how tiny they are. I also added small pearl halves to the bottoms of the abalone shells to act as feet. Abalone shells don't sit very flat and without the little feet they are wobbly~

 The littlest abalone shell is the one in the bottom left corner. It is even to small to hold a ring.

Some of these I will use as containers to gift some necklaces to some of my friends....
I've got a lot more rhinestones that I'm wanting to play with-- I guess a little visit to Pinterest is in order :-)
big hugs,
Cheryl