Sea Shells by the Sea Shore

© Sybille Sterk

Do not copy or publish this in any way, shape or form without my written permission.

I took this image of the shells yesterday when I took some other still life images for photo manipulations I have planned. I've tried a few times to get the perfect combination of shells and the light falling on them just right and this time it worked (imho) perfectly.

The water and splashes were added. Below is the original image:

I like it and it's pretty but it lacks the drama of the eidted one. I added water reflections, textures, the splashes, colour adjustments and highlights/shadows to create the drama.

All images/textures/brushes my own or bought. Edited with Photoshop.

All my images are available on Redbubble, Artflakes, Society6 and Bluecanvas as prints, cards, posters, skins for laptops, Blackberry, iPhones and other phones (for the skins go to Bluecanvas). You can now also get most of my images on cushion covers (go to Society6 for these).

All available on Society6

The Sea in a Nutshell

My latest creation.

Funny things, names. This one started off with a starfish made from copper. Sea theme. So far so good. I made some pebbles (I thought) from off-cuts and texturised them and played with them using my new toys... Hmmm. After that they looked like little nutshells rather than pebbles. At which point I came up with the idea to call it "The Sea in a Nutshell". :-)


Above is a close-up of the starfish - cut out from copper sheet, textured, filed, torched to give it colour, shaped using my new toys, and finally filed and sanded again to make sure all the rough edges are gone. I've hung it from handmade large and small copper rings and a bayong wood ring I bought recently on Etsy. The bead you can also see on the picture is picture jasper in a lovely very pale blue-green with black and brown flecks.

Above is the "dangle" that goes through the wood ring to close the lariat. The lariat is infinitely adjustable, on a slim neck it will go round twice.

At the front of the picture you can see the lovely ceramic bead I swapped with Toby from Natural Attril and a little handmade (by me) copper fish. You can also see my 'nutshells', some lovely pale blue wooden beads (from my London trip), a star limpet shell, a ring top cowrie shell and some seeds strung in a circle.

Above is shown part of the actual "chain", strung with coconut spiral beads, another cowrie shell, bayong wood bead (disc), a round redwood bead, lovely ebony wood beads and a spotted horn bead, and some seeds that have been turned into beads. To add more texture I've also added bits of chain.

Above is another close up of the wooden ring and some of the beads on the chain.


I am really pleased with how this turned out. It's fluid, it's organic and has lots of texture and it really is 'the sea in a nutshell'. Hope you like it too. Available soon in my Etsy shop.

All the ebony, redwood and bayong wood beads are from this Etsy Shop: e & e bungalow.