DIY Cuttlefish Wall Decoration

I have been eyeing off these cuttle fish and driftwood wall decoration for so long but never had a spare $300- $400 to spend on one so i decided i’d make my own.

I thought yes this will be easy i live close to the beach so i’ll go there one afternoon and collect around 20-30 cuttlefish and i’ll be set. I spent 1hr at the beach and found…. one flimsy mini teeny tiny piece!! I was not happy, i imagined where i could put it – i even imagined having several around my home.  Weeks later a friend told me you can actually get them online so i jumped on and ordered them from Five Chicks Discount on eBay. They arrived within a few days so typical me I dropped everything I was doing that day and got straight to it….housework can wait.

I had no idea how i was going to create this because I couldn’t find a tutorial anywhere (hence why i am sharing this with you all) but it came out ok, i think?

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

• A roll of strong wire
• 1kg bag of cuttlefish (more than enough to make a big one )
• wooden beads
• Driftwood broken into 10 – 25cm bits
• Sea sponge
• Silver wire coat hanger
• Drill 

HOW TO MAKE IT

1. I started by breaking up the driftwood into 10 – 25cm pieces, i only found a few bits of small driftwood so i broke the long bits into smaller bits.
2. Drill a hole into the middle of the driftwood making sure the hole is big enough for the wire to feed through.
3. Drill a hole into the middle of the cuttlefish, i drilled from the soft side because it was easier to do.
4. Cut the wire to the size you want the wall hanging to be. Mine is approximately 1mtr in diameter but because the wire i had already was quite soft and bendy i decided to use two pieces and twined them together. If you have to purchase this i’d make sure your wire is quite strong and not to easy to bend.
5. Now that you have everything ready it’s time to make a display on the ground of the order you want the cuttlefish, driftwood, beads and sea sponge to be. I started in the middle with some longer bits of driftwood working my way into smaller pieces but this part is totally up to you.
6. Once you are happy with how it looks on the ground start to feed the pieces onto your wire starting from one end working your way to the other.
7. Twine each end to one another, i like the rustic shabby look of the wire so i made mine a little rustic looking.
8. Depending on the strength of your wire this is where you may need to use a wire coat hanger. I found mine wouldn’t hold it’s oval shape it all just flopped into the centre which i didn’t want so i unraveled the coat hanger and bent it into an oval shape. I inserted the wire into the top bead on each end then wrapped the wire around coat hanger to hold everything into shape.
9. Hang on the wall then stand back to admire your creation. High five….

I hope you find this DIY to be as easy and fun as i did.

Have a great day.

Anna. x