This post was sponsored by HP Sprout.  Thank you for supporting the companies that help make this blog possible.

For those of you that are new to Oleander and Palm, one important bit of information about me is that I grew up in Papua New Guinea.  I’m an island girl at heart.  I have many treasures from living there, put some of my most precious ones are my sea shells that I collected on beaches and bought from children in villages.

And you might also know that I am married to a real live nerd.  Lonnie, my husband, is a High School Biology teacher and he is pretty passionate about all things of the natural world. And we recently were given a bunch of shells.  The nerd spends a lot of time studying the shells (no really he does).  So, I thought it would be fun to create a little shell art piece for his enjoyed (and yours if you’d like). 

The new HP Sprout computer is such a cool new too.  The Sprout has a built in image scanner and even a 3D scanner.  You can easily take 3D objects and convert them to useable images in a matter of seconds.  I created this shell pattern print in very short order.

I started by placing a couple shells at a time on the touch mat.  Then I used the “capture” function to take pictures of the shells.  

The Sprout automatically separates the individual objects and creates images for each one.  It takes away the background, so you are left with just the shell object.

Once I had all the images “captured”, I simply swiped the shells I wanted to use from the touch screen to the touch mat, by swiping down.  Then I placed my shells in rows by moving them and resizing them with my fingers on the touch mat.  I easily copied and pasted the shells in multiples with the easy to use editing tools on the right hand side of the touch mat. 

When I had all the shells where I wanted them, I printed it on nice card stock.  I printed mine at Kinkos Fedex, because their printers do such a great job compared to my little home printer (and a 8×10 only cost 52 cents to print).

I placed in in a simple frame with a nice wide mat board.  I’m quite pleased with how it turned out and even more importantly, the nerd LOVES it.