DIY:Gold Oyster Ornaments

These gold oyster ornaments were the favors that K and I gave our guests at our wedding.

I will share the way we presented them once I have wedding photos to share, but I figured with the holidays upon us that y'all might draw some gift inspiration from this DIY.

We collected around 100 oysters on a camping trip to Edisto, which I was planning to use for a wreath but never actually did.  When we got engaged and chose our date I knew I wanted to embrace the Christmas spirit with our favors.  So here we go!

First thing to note, because we found our shells on the beach, they were already cleaned and bleached by the the sun.  That saved us a huge effort!
We purchased Krylon 18k gold plate spraypaint at Michael's.

We laid out the shells to paint.

We chose to paint either the inside or the outside gold, I liked the look of both.

(Which do you prefer?)

Once complete, my dad drilled a small hole at the top of each shell.

In hindsight we may have done this before painting as we had to touch them up after.

We tied each with a thin Ivory ribbon.

Voila!