Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) Guides

Summer Shells DIY Recipe List: How To Get & Season Dates

Summer Shells are a special summertime seasonal crafting material in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH)! Learn how to get Summer Shells and all of the beach themed shell items you can craft with them in this guide.

How to Find & Get Summer Shells

To find and get Summer Shell crafting materials in Animal Crossing: New Horizons on your island, you’ll need to be playing during the Summer season in June, July, and August for the Northern Hemisphere or December, January, and February for the Southern Hemisphere. They replace the seasonal Young Spring Bamboo found in the Spring months beforehand.

You can find the Summer Shells randomly spawned on your island’s beaches along the shore during this limited period in the Summer months. They have a distinct blue color appearance in contrast to the regular shells found year-round, so they shouldn’t be hard to spot among the others.

When you do spot a blue Summer Shell on your beach, simply pick it up and you can begin crafting the exclusive summer items, assuming you have learned any DIY Crafting Recipes for them. Read on further in this guide to see all of the possible recipes!

How To Efficiently Get Summer Shells Quickly

To find the most Summer Shells  quickly and efficiently, we recommend checking your island beaches throughout the day and about once every hour to maximize your chances. In our experience, it takes about an hour for your beach to full respawn with new shells. You can also time travel throughout the day to speed this process up.

Be sure to still pick up regular non-summer shells too while you’re at it though to make room for new potential Summer Shells  to appear, plus you’ll still need the other shells to craft some of the Summer items. Not to mention there’s a bunch of other Shell Set items to craft using them.

Summer Shells Sell Price at Nook’s Cranny

If you don’t want to craft items using them, Summer Shells can be sold to Timmy & Tommy at Nook’s Cranny for a sell price of 600 Bells each. You only need to find about 30 Summer Shells  to craft the entire set, and you have the entire 3 months of Summer, so don’t hesitate too much about selling them.

Summer Shells DIY Crafting Recipes List

There are 9 different Summer Shell themed items you can exclusively craft with Summer Shell seasonal materials in Animal Crossing: New Horizons including furniture, tools, accessories, and more listed below.

You can unlock these DIY Crafting Recipes by shooting down flying Balloon Presents during Summer Season in June, July, and August for the Northern Hemisphere or December, January, and February for the Southern Hemisphere.

For veteran players, a new recipe called the Summer-Shell Rug was added in November 2020’s Version 1.6 Update that you might not have yet in 2021.

Looking for the regular Shell Furniture DIY Crafting recipes you can craft all year with other shells on your beach? Check out our Shell Furniture Set Guide here.

Shell Wand Recipe

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Shell Wand by shooting down balloons in the sky during Summer Season.

Craft the Shell Wand using the following materials:

• 3 Summer Shell
• 3 Star Fragment

Shell Wreath Recipe

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Shell Wreath by shooting down balloons in the sky, or from Isabelle’s morning announcements, during Summer Season.

Craft the Shell Wreath using the following materials:

• 1 Summer Shell
• 1 Sea Snail
• 1 Sand Dollar
• 1 Coral
• 1 Giant Clam
• 1 Cowrie

Shellfish Pochette Recipe

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Shellfish Pochette by shooting down balloons in the sky during Summer Season.

Craft the Shellfish Pochette using the following materials:

• 2 Giant Clam
• 6 Summer Shell

Starry-Sands Flooring Recipe

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Starry-Sands Flooring by shooting down balloons in the sky during Summer Season.

Craft the Starry-Sands Flooring using the following materials:

• 3 Summer Shell
• 1 Sandy-Beach Flooring (1 Coral, 1 Giant Clam, 1 Sand Dollar, 1 Sea Snail, 1 Venus Comb)

Summer-Shell Rug Recipe

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Summer-Shell Rug by shooting down balloons in the sky during Summer Season. Newly added in the Version 1.6 Winter Update.

Craft the Summer-Shell Rug using the following materials:

• 6 Summer Shell

Tropical Vista Recipe

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Tropical Vista by shooting down balloons in the sky during Summer Season.

Craft the Tropical Vista using the following materials:

• 5 Summer Shell

Underwater Flooring Recipe

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Underwater Flooring by shooting down balloons in the sky during Summer Season.

Craft the Underwater Flooring using the following materials:

• 3 Summer Shell
• 3 Coral

Underwater Wall Recipe

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Underwater Wall by shooting down balloons in the sky during Summer Season.

Craft the Underwater Wall using the following materials:

• 3 Summer Shell
• 5 Coral

Water Flooring Recipe

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Water Flooring by shooting down balloons in the sky during Summer Season.

Craft the Water Flooring using the following materials:

• 6 Summer Shell

Total Materials Needed To Craft All Summer Shell Items

Looking to craft the entire set of Summer Shell items? In the handy table below, you can find a complete summary of how many Summer Shells and other crafting materials are needed to craft every single item listed above.

The materials required to craft the Sandy-Beach Flooring used for the Starry-Sands Flooring are included.

How to Get & Learn Summer Shell DIY Recipes

There are two ways you can find and get new Summer Shell DIY Crafting Recipes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but unfortunately it’s mostly dependent on luck taking time and patience.

Morning Isabelle Announcement: Shell Wreath

Near the beginning of the Summer season in June for Northern Hemisphere and December for Southern Hemisphere, you should hear from Isabelle in the morning announcements about the new seasonal crafting material and recipes. If you haven’t already learned the Shell Wreath DIY Crafting recipe, she’ll send it to your NookPhone during the announcements.

There’s been a lot of confusion in the community about when or how this morning announcement from Isabelle occurs, but from our knowledge so far, it can only happen when you have no other notable announcements.

In other words, the game seems to use the Summer Shell recipe announcement as a filler item of sorts when there’s nothing else for Isabelle to talk about! So whenever you do have no villagers moving in, buildings opening, or other notable events, you should get the announcement.

Flying Balloon Presents

During the Summer season, all Balloon Presents flying in the sky over your island have a chance of dropping one of 9 different Summer Shell DIY Crafting recipes! Just pull out a Slingshot and shoot away when you see one.

Unfortunately, there’s no concrete way to control exactly what you’ll get from balloon presents, so you’ll need to just keep shooting them down until you get lucky. Duplicate crafting recipes are easily possible too and should be expected, so we recommend trying to make trades with friends to complete the collection faster. You may be able to sell any duplicates for a hefty amount online too.

We do have some general tips for how you can most effectively hunt and farm balloon presents though by taking advantage of a few specific mechanics. And for the laziest farming method, check out our Farm DIY Recipe Balloons Easy Using Jail Bars Wall Trick guide here!

New Balloons can spawn every 5 minutes at times ending in a ‘4’ or ‘9’. For example, a balloon could appear at 4:19pm or 4:24pm. By the time it actually reaches your beach though, the time will likely be closer to 4:20pm or 4:45pm.

A Balloon won’t always spawn on these minutes — it’s a random chance as to whether one will actually appear every time. Expect some spawn times to be duds with nothing to see.

The wind direction that Balloons fly in from changes throughout the day. Once you spot the direction that one Balloon flies into your island from, you can expect all Balloons to come from that side for quite some time. Then around 6pm-7pm in the evening, the direction will flip to the opposite.

Walk up and down your beach around spawn time. Now that you have an idea of the current wind direction and when Balloons can spawn, it’s possible to find them with relative ease by pacing up and down the side of your beach where the wind is blowing from when it’s near the possible spawn times ending in ‘4’ and ‘9’.

Turn up your volume and listen carefully. When a Balloon is flying nearby you, a relatively obvious wind sound plays to let you know. This is great when multitasking.

What About Bottles & Villagers Crafting?

Contrary to popular belief, these special seasonal crafting recipes are exclusive to dropping from flying balloon presents in the sky. Your villagers crafting in their homes and message in a bottles appearing on your beach draw from a separate pool of DIY recipes.

Thanks to Mogyay and Merchant Willow for contributing photos to this guide. If you have any suggestions or spot any errors, please help us out in the comments below so we can address them!