Summer Shells DIY Recipe List: How To Get & Season Dates
Summer Shells 
are a seasonal summer crafting material in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) used to craft special beach themed DIY recipes!
There are 9 different DIY recipes that you can craft using Summer Shells .
You can primarily find these DIY recipes by shooting down flying Balloon Presents from June, July, and August for the Northern Hemisphere or December, January, and February for the Southern Hemisphere.
Summer Shells DIY Recipe List
Summer Shell×3
Star Fragment×3
Crafted: 5,100 Bells
Summer Shell×1
Sea Snail×1
Sand Dollar×1
Coral×1
Giant Clam×1
Cowrie×1Crafted: 4,720 Bells
Giant Clam×2Summer Shell×6Crafted: 10,800 Bells
Summer Shell×3
Sandy-Beach Flooring×1Crafted: 7,720 Bells
Summer Shell×6Crafted: 7,200 Bells
Summer Shell×5Crafted: 6,000 Bells
Summer Shell×3Coral×3Crafted: 6,600 Bells
Summer Shell×3Coral×5Crafted: 8,600 Bells
Summer Shell×6Crafted: 7,200 BellsTotal Materials to Craft All 9 Recipes
36Summer Shell9Coral3Giant Clam3Star Fragment1Cowrie1Sand Dollar1Sandy-Beach Flooring1Sea SnailLooking 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.
How to Get Summer Shells
To get Summer Shells in Animal Crossing: New Horizons naturally, 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.
During this Summer period, you can find Summer Shells randomly appearing on your island’s beaches along the shore. 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.
New shells appear about once every hour throughout the day, but they can be any type of shell. Be sure to pick up other shells to make room for more summer shells to spawn.
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.
How to Get & Learn Summer Shell DIY Recipes
The main way to find Summer Shell DIY recipes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is by shooting down floating Balloon Presents found flying in the sky over your island during June, July, and August for the Northern Hemisphere or December, January, and February for the Southern Hemisphere.
During this Summer season period, all balloon presents have a chance of dropping a summer shell recipe — but they can contain other non-seasonal recipes too. Duplicates are also possible as the game does not drop them in a specified order. There’s no concrete way to control exactly what you’ll get, so just keep shooting them down until you get lucky.
Watch for the balloon traveling direction — they will always fly across your island in a single direction during the morning and afternoon. Then later in the day around 6PM, the direction of wind will reverse!
Whichever end of your island the balloons are travelling from, we recommend hanging out on that beach side to regularly walk up and down the shore looking for them as they first reach the island. Pass the time by collecting some Manila Clams or trying your hand at fishing too!
Finally, flying balloon presents always have a chance of spawning on an every 5 minute cycle beginning at 4 minutes past the hour. That means you can expect possible balloon spawns at say 1:04pm, 1:09pm, 1:14pm, 1:19pm, and so on after 1pm. Keep in mind these are possible appearances though — they won’t always show up every time and a spawn time can pass by multiple times without a balloon.
Isabelle’s Morning Announcement
In addition to the balloons, the Shell Wreath recipe can be unlocked from Isabelle in your NookPhone during her morning announcements near the beginning of the season.
What About Message 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 messages in a bottle appearing on your beach draw from a separate pool of DIY recipes. The only exception are bottles found on the Summer Shells themed island on a Kapp’n boat tour.
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!