York Times , National Geographic , Coastal Living , Florida Travel & Life plus many more, including international travel media.
Pam Rambo opened two galleries in three years, selling work that she and others created. As fate would have it, she sold those galleries four weeks before Hurricane Charlie in 2004. But Rambo’s hardly the retiring type, and her passion for art and shells came together a few years later, when she started painting shells and holiday cards, and quickly gained distribution in 30 stores within a month. And then, along came her first Apple computer — and this odd thing called “blogging.” “I took one of the classes at the Apple store to learn how to build a website,” she recalls. “When I asked the guy how to get people to my site, he said: do a blog. I had never heard of such a thing, but he encouraged me to write about what I was passionate about.” That passion was shelling, and thus the website iLoveShelling.com was born. “I felt like I had found my calling,” Rambo says. “I started writing and it just took off. It’s a community of people who love what I love. It reaches so many people around the world, for so many different reasons.” And reachpeople shedoes. According to internet and social media analytics, Rambo’s website was visited by almost 675,000 shell lovers last year in 173 countries. And her social media outlets — Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube — average 425,000 or so impressions every month. “The thing is, I’m just a sheller who enjoys sharing what I can with others,” she explains. “None of this happened by design.” Maybenot, but PamRambo today is recognizedas one of the go-to people for shelling in Southwest Florida — and has been a featured contributor to Good Morning America , the Travel Channel , Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio , the New
But few endeavors to bring the love of shells to the world can top her amazing creation for the first National Sea Shell Day on the first day of summer in 2016. Working with Lee County VCB staff that conceived the holiday as a way to put a spotlight on Southwest Florida, Rambo volunteered to come up with the big idea. After two days, it hit her: a huge shell sculpture that was mobile, capable of spreading the joy of shelling anywhere. The result is the “Shell Love Bug,” a Volkswagen Beetlebeautifullydecorated inmore than20,000 native shells with (appropriately) a Junonia in the center of the heart. “I came up with the idea and the design, and every single one of those 20,000 shells was collected in Southwest Florida,” she says. “Sixty-five people were involved in the project, including the Sanibel Shell Crafters, and in the end it was a 1,200 hour labor of love.” The Shell Love Bug is now the property of the Visitor & Convention Bureau and is seen
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker