First, eat a lot of pistachios. (Bummer, right?)

Then, wash the shells. I washed mine in some soapy water with my hands in a bowl. You can also boil them.

As they dry, cut out a circle from some sturdy cardboard. For the big flowers the circle was ~ 2 1/2 - 3 in.

Glue 4 shells in the center in a circle/overlapping pattern.

From those 4, just keep gluing around in circles. Experiment with the direction and general "flow" of the shells.

As the rows get further out, tilt the shells outward more.

Pretty soon you have a finished flower!

I filled the outer spaces between the shells & cardboard with extra hot glue just to make it more sturdy.

Like I said, I used pretty much all the shells from the bag and this is what I ended up with.

It was a 1/2 lb bag I'm pretty sure...

I spray painted the flower with some red spray paint. It took a few layers.

While that was drying, I got a blank canvas and painted it with acrylic paints for the background.

I then painted on a stem with more acrylics.

With the green paint from the stem, I painted two more shells to use as leaves.

I also painted the tips & center of the flower with orange acrylic paint.

I have some rub on sayings for scrap booking and I used the one that says {happy} for this project.

I used hot glue and super glue to put the flower in place and just hot glue for the leaves. On the leaves, I lined the inside rim with glue so it didn't leak out.

I then placed and rubbed on the letters.

And then I was done!