The beautiful shells stitch features a cool crochet technique where you work crochet chain framing like a "scaffold," that you can then build thick beautiful shells on top of. There are several intricate (looking) stitches that employ this strategy such as the uber popular Virus Stitch.

If you've never crocheted a pattern this way, the simpler cousin of the virus stitch is this beautiful shell stitch (I can see where it gets the name). Alternating shell and framework rows also gives us the opportunity for some very pretty colorwork while only using one color per row.