cause the bigger the shell the better, sprinkle a lil mirror on, like come on

what you will need:

piece of wood (for ex mdf) as a base

if needed wood planks to stabilise your wood base and to create something to hang it of needed

Mirror

hot glue

(Tile glue (dispersion glue)if you use super sleek wood like mdf)

jig saw

plaster

gloves

work space protection, cause its gonna get messy

first I traced my mirror on the wood and drew a shell around it

my mirror is about 15 cm big and the whole shell around 60 x 50 cm

you can totally make this with much smaller dimensions and you can go with any shape you like, I just felt this pearl in the shell thing is kinda fun since I am still on a shell high

the mdf I used was 0,8 cm thick, to be safe I screwed two pieces of wood to the back to get some extra support.

you can use some 1 x 2 pine, what ever you have.

practically if you screw a piece of wood to the back horizontally you can hang the piece later on pretty easy

I cut the outer shape of my shell, I would recommend not going too far in cause you really create a weak spot there, make it not too narrow.

I glued on the mirror using good ol hot glue, always does the trick

I just started shaping my shell with plaster, mixing always just a little at a time, because this stuff is pretty fast curing.

(little tip if you use MDF I would recommend putting down a layer of tile glue first and make it super rough so the plaster has something to stick. my plaster ended up lifting cause the mdf was too smooth. I glued the whole lifted pieces on with tile glue, so be smart and just put the tile glue first.

if you use some kind of wood that's a little rougher you might be able to skip the glue)

I followed my pre sketched lines and tried to make it a little three dimensional along the way

be careful to not bend your wood or lift it up while the plaster is hardening, you might create cracks and will cause the plaster to lift.

always let it dry over night

I made several layers.

first this base layer that was kinda flat and thin and let that fully dry.

from there on you can always add more.

make sure to not slather it with water, it will sink into the already dried parts and everything will take foreverrrrrr to dry plus will be heavy af

after I let it dry over night I got this big lift, that's when I pulled out the tile glue andaust glued the whole top part on with tile glue, worked.

but as said before: if you make your starting surface a little rougher it shouldn't lift in the first place.

cracks can always appear, but you can easily just fill them back up.

once I had everything kinda dry and hanging I mixed some rather thin plater and brushed it on with a brush to smooth the surface a little bit

I added some more dimension as well,

you can just slab it over already dried places and build height or volume as you like

especially for the outside of the shell I liked the texture kinda rough like a shell would be naturally

at some point I just stopped, because I felt like I could always add some more, but this stuff is getting heavy real quick so I just called it quits and decided she's done.

same as with the plaster shelf, it takes one to two weeks until its all the way dry, the plaster is solid white once fully dried.