Summer Shells DIY Crafting Recipes, How To Find & Get Them, Sell Price
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 in New Horizons
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.
Getting Summer Shells Outside Of Summer
If you want to find Summer Shells outside of the real-world Summer season, you’ll have to time travel to a summer month by changing your Nintendo Switch’s date and time. You might also want to try visiting a friend in the opposite Hemisphere as you if it’s Winter on your island.
Alternatively, you can also buy and trade Summer Shells from other players online as this item can be easily dropped or mailed for trading purposes.
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.
List of All Summer Shell Item DIY Crafting Recipes
There’s a bunch of summer themed beach shell items you can exclusively craft with Summer Shell seasonal materials in Animal Crossing: New Horizons including accessories, wallpaper, flooring, and more.
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: How to Craft & Get All Items + Variations Guide here.
The complete list below includes all eight of the Summer Shell items and their DIY Crafting recipes with screenshots of each item, and the crafting materials you need to make them.
WEDDING SEASON EVENT: While you’re here, check out our complete Wedding Season event guide for how to get all of the Wedding items and the most Heart Crystals!
How to Craft Shell Wand
The following crafting materials below are required to craft the Shell Wand:
- 3 Summer Shell
- 3 Star Fragment
How to Craft Shell Wreath
The following crafting materials below are required to craft the Shell Wreath:
- 1 Summer Shell
- 1 Sea Snail
- 1 Sand Dollar
- 1 Coral
- 1 Giant Clam
- 1 Cowrie
How to Craft Shellfish Pochette
The following crafting materials below are required to craft the Shellfish Pochette:
- 2 Giant Clam
- 6 Summer Shell
How to Craft Starry-Sands Flooring
The following crafting materials below are required to craft the Starry-Sands Flooring:
- 3 Summer Shell
- 1 Sandy-Beach Flooring (1 Coral, 1 Giant Clam, 1 Sand Dollar, 1 Sea Snail, 1 Venus Comb)
How to Craft Tropical Vista
The following crafting materials below are required to craft the Tropical Vista:
- 5 Summer Shell
How to Craft Underwater Flooring
The following crafting materials below are required to craft the Underwater Flooring:
- 3 Summer Shell
- 3 Coral
How to Craft Underwater Wall
The following crafting materials below are required to craft the Underwater Wall:
- 3 Summer Shell
- 5 Coral
How to Craft Water Flooring
The following crafting materials below are required to craft the Water Flooring:
- 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.
| Material | # |
|---|---|
| Summer Shell | 30 |
| Coral | 10 |
| Giant Clam | 4 |
| Star Fragment | 3 |
| Sea Snail | 2 |
| Sand Dollar | 2 |
| Cowrie | 1 |
| Venus Comb | 1 |
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, and honestly it does seem to be all over the place. We do know for sure that the seasonal recipe announcements can’t occur when you have any other happenings, like villagers moving in or buildings opening.
However, despite having days without announcements, many users are reporting no Summer Shells announcement in June yet. One possible theory we have is that the ongoing Wedding Season event for the entire month of June may be interfering and we’ll have to wait until July, but that’s not confirmed.
Don’t get too worked up over missing out on Isabelle’s morning announcement though, because the Shell Wreath DIY Crafting recipe can be obtained through regular balloon presents during the season as well — it’s not exclusive to the announcements by any means.
Flying Balloon Presents
During the Summer season, all Balloon Presents flying in the sky over your island have a chance of dropping a Summer Shell DIY Crafting recipe! Unfortunately, there’s no concrete way to control exactly what you’ll get, so just keep shooting them down until you get lucky.
Duplicate Summer Shell DIY Crafting items 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, especially to players in the opposite Hemisphere as you.
We do have some tips for how you can most effectively hunt and farm balloon presents though! First of all, 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!
Secondly, 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 1:04, 1:09, 1:14, 1:19, and so on. Keep in mind these are possible appearances though — they won’t always show up every time and a spawn time could pass by multiple times before actually happening.
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!