A California See Shells Tablescape

I live about a mile and a half from the Pacific Ocean so I often create tablescapes with an ocean theme. I love to walk along the sand collecting shells and sea glass although there is no sea glass here really. If you compare my recent tablescapes, you can see that this one recycles elements from my Bird tablescape and my Crab tablescape. It shows how you can create a variety of tablescapes using some of the same elements. If you want to be more creative when setting a table you could determine what colors you might use over and over depending on your decor and dishes and start gathering a few elements that you can mix and match. When I started tablescaping, I bought basic colors for chargers and dinner plates and the salad plates became the element that dictated the theme of the tables.

We are lucky to live so close to the sand and waves.

I have slowly purchased these shell plates on Ebay over the past few years. I still don’t have a complete set of dinner plates but I continue to watch for them. The tablecloth came from Amazon.

The salad and dinner plate are both Bordallo Pinheiro, and made in Portugal. There are many different shell plates available from many different makers.

It is easier to find a shell plate that is salad size, it is more difficult to find one that is dinner plate size. I actually have four of these plates that are charger size but I needed six for this table so I didn’t use them.

The chargers are the same ones that I used for the Crab tablescape. The blue one is Mikasa’s Color Spectrum in Royal Blue that I bought on Ebay, a few at a time. The second charger is my Antique Beaded charger that I bought from Williams-Sonoma a few years ago.

This stainless flatware is another one of my favorites. It is made by Reed & Barton and is called Colonial Williamsburg Gloucester Shell. Each piece has a different shell on the bottom.

I bought the napkin rings on Ebay, They have different shell designs. They are labeled Knobler Taiwan. The napkins and table runner came from Etsy. A seller on there has made napkins for me several times. I tell her what I am looking for and she finds the material and makes them for me. This wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but it is really better than my original idea.

These are the same glasses that I used for my Crab table and my Bird table. I seem to be stuck on blue at the moment! I bought the blue goblets on Ebay, you can still find them for sale there. They were made by Libbey in the 1970’s and the pattern is Tulip in Dusky Blue. This clear goblet is actually the pattern my mother chose for her wedding crystal in 1938. She couldn’t remember the name of the pattern or who made it and I searched for decades trying to identify it with no luck. Finally one day I was reading through old San Bernardino newspapers online doing some genealogical research looking for information about my grandparents and I stumbled on an article about a wedding shower for my mother that mentioned her gifts and the name of her crystal! This Rock Sharpe crystal goblet was made by Libbey and the pattern was Ridgeway. I was able to complete the set buying them a few at a time on Ebay.

The shell place card holders are Andrea by Sadek, can’t remember where I bought them.

I bought this large shell several years ago and it usually sits on a shelf in the family room. It needed something after I put it on the table so I bought flat blue marbles and filled it and then put a few shells in it.

This table makes me want to walk along the beach and look for shells today!

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I put a new tablescape on my blog every week so please check back!