Pistachio Shell Flowers

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My mind was blown when I found out that pistachio shell art was a thing. I kept seeing some really cool art projects that I never would have guessed were made of pistachio shells. I decided I had to try it… but I don’t eat pistachios. Fortunately, at least a couple of members of my family do. So I bought some and practically begged my husband and kids to eat them. It actually wasn’t that hard. They didn’t eat them fast enough for my liking, however, so I ended up shelling a bunch and saving the nuts for them to eat later.

Once you get the hang of making flowers, you’re all set for this one! You can paint the flowers to match your decor—even making it seasonally appropriate if you want to.

To see my more recent pistachio shell project, check out my pistachio shell flower jar post.

But back to this post, let’s start with supplies.

Supplies:

• Pistachio shells
• Glue gun/glue sticks
• Thin cardboard
• Scissors
• Paint (preferably spray paint)
• Frame with glass removed
• Cardstock/paper 
• Tacky glue or photo squares

Before you get started, you need to prepare your shells. If they’re unsalted, you don’t need to wash them. If they are salted, just rinse them off in a colander and lay them out on a towel to dry. In either case, pull off any little pieces of husk that are stuck to the shells. Once they’re clean and dry, they’re ready to go! 

If I were going to be very methodical about this, I would cut circles out of cardboard in a few different sizes—maybe even using my Cameo, and make my flowers in those sizes. That’s not exactly what I did. I started out by tracing some bottle caps on a piece of cereal box, but by the end I was cutting out rough circle-like shapes and calling it good. I’ll explain in a bit.

To make a flower, first put some hot glue in the center of one of your circles. You can start your flowers with either two or three pieces of shells. I’ve done both. Press your two or three shell pieces down into the glue to form the center of the flower. The easiest way is to put down two pieces facing each other. Add a ring of glue around the center and add more shells. Keep working your way out from the center until your flower is the size you want it to be.

You can play with the shape of your flowers as you go. Keeping the shells upright vs tilted back will give you different-looking flowers. For your last ring, you can also space out the shells a little to also give it a different look.

You don’t have to go to the very edge of your cardboard circle if you don’t want to. Most of the time I ended up trimming the cardboard around the flower because I got it to a point where I liked it the way it was. (Or because I started the flower off center and had to trim it to even it out.) That’s actually why I stopped being so precise with my circles. Once you’ve mounted the flowers to the frame, you won’t even see the cardboard base. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

To figure out how many flowers you need, start laying them out on your frame. You may find yourself making some cute little flowers to fill in some gaps. Once you’re happy with it, take a picture so you’ll remember where everything goes. Even if you don’t put the exact flowers back in the same places, knowing roughly which sizes go where will help.

The great thing about working with hot glue is that your flowers are ready to be painted right away. You could use a brush to paint them, but I found it much easier and faster to spray paint them. I’ve seen pictures of very convincing and lifelike succulent gardens made this way, so to do that you could use different shades of green and maybe some pink/purple. I envisioned using all metallics, so I went with silver, gold, copper and rose gold—all of which I had on hand. (The copper and rose gold are pretty similar.) I’ve even considered using red, green, and white to make a pretty Christmasy arrangement.

To mount the flowers, first attach some paper or cardstock to the sturdy back of your frame. You can use photo squares or a thin layer of glue—just make sure that it’s secure so that the weight of the flowers doesn’t pull it down. Once you’ve put it back into the frame, glue the flowers into place!

This very same flower-making technique can be used to make all sorts of things. I’ve been eyeing a wreath made out of these flowers, only in that case the flowers are formed directly on the wreath form. No matter what you make, you will probably hear someone say, “That’s made out of what?!”

If you’d like to share your pistachio shell creations with me, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook.

Happy crafting!