To make seashell earrings and necklaces, you'll need seashells, jewelry findings, pliers, and a drill. For the best results, choose lightweight shells and high-quality metal components. You can find everything locally at Michaels or online from Amazon, PandaHall, and Etsy.

Creating seashell jewelry is a beautiful way to blend coastal charm with personal style. Here's a breakdown of what you'll need and where to find it:

Essential Tools & Materials

• Seashells: Choose lightweight, intact shells with interesting shapes and colors. Avoid fragile or overly thick ones. SeashellSupply.com is, of course, a great place to get shells for jewelry.
• Jewelry Findings: These include jump rings, earring hooks, clasps, and chains. Opt for stainless steel, brass, or gold-filled for durability and skin safety.
• Wire: Use 20–24 gauge jewelry wire for wrapping or connecting shells. Sterling silver or gold-filled wire adds elegance.
• Pliers: A set of round-nose, flat-nose, and wire cutters is essential for assembling pieces.
• Drill or Rotary Tool: A small hand drill or Dremel with a diamond-tipped bit lets you safely create holes in shells.
• Sandpaper: Use fine-grit sandpaper to smooth rough shell edges.
• Adhesive (optional): For bonding shells to metal or resin, choose a strong jewelry-grade glue.
• Resin (optional): Epoxy resin can give pendants a glossy, professional finish.

Best Kits & Components Online

Here are top-rated kits and materials available online. You can shop your local craft stores too, but as far as places that can get you what you need wherever you live the biggest retailers are also the best:

• SUNNYCLUE Shell Earring Kit (Amazon) – Includes 122 pieces for 10 pairs of earrings. Shells, hooks, jump rings, and charms. $14. This kit comes with components you will likely not use because you replace them with your shells but it is a nice selection of brass/steel findings. AMAZON has a huge selection of jewelry findings and tools.
• PandaHall Shell Drop Earring Kit – Includes enamel charms, pendants, chains, and findings. $6.70. This is another selection of nice, inexpensive findings with some coastal components like metal starfish that you may choose to use while replacing other charms with your shells. Panda Hall is actually a great place to find inexpensive findings of all types.
• Michaels – Your go-to for jewelry tools, findings, wire, and beads. They sell a vast array of tools for jewelry making. Their focus is on beads, but the tools will work for you too as will their many collections of findings, chains etc.

What we did was examine some jewelry we liked and figured out what the specific findings and components we liked are called. That helped us narrow down the search within these huge shopping sites.

What About a Dremel?

You will need a Dremel or some other kind of preferably diamond tipped rotary tool to drill your shells. The chief concerns to keep in mind are how fine the work you want to do will be and the volume of work you will be doing. It can get very hard on your hands using a cheap rotary tool if you want to drill a lot of shells, but if you are only making a few pieces per year for yourself or a friend you don’t need a top of the line tool.

The following are some options, listed in order of what is widely considered the best to less expensive but still solid options.

• Foredom – These are professional grade flex shaft jewelers’ tools. They cost a lot, but they do a VERY good job and make creating a lot of jewelry a lot easier. They can also be found used online if you want to save some money.
• Euro Tool Flex Shaft – These are similar to the Foredom but are a step down in both price and quality.
• Dremel – Dremel makes… dremels. They have a fairly powerful 12 volt cordless kit that will work well for most of us. You may need to get a finer diamond top for it though. This is the case with most Dremel options. They also have a 4 volt option that is less expensive.

You can also go to Harbor Freight, Lowes or Home Depot and get an even less expensive option. But we recommend that you get a clear understanding of what you need to accomplish what you are doing. The nice thing about these stores is they have a solid return policy, so if you need a different tool you can exchange it.

Whether you're crafting for fun or building a coastal-inspired jewelry line, these tools and sources will help you create stunning, ocean-kissed pieces. When you do finish a great piece of shell jewelry, we’d love it if you’d send us an image of it so we can share it online. It’s inspiring to see the great ideas our customers have.