A Room for My Little Sailors

     As you may know, I just moved from Virginia to Rhode Island.  When we got here I decided the boys' room needed a change.  As cliched as it is for a sailor's sons to have a nautical room, I still went for it.  It may be predictable, but it is also so cute.  I will be showing updates as I go through the decorating process, but today I wanted to show the newest piece of my efforts.
     I love the idea of personalizing the room, and I wanted their names to appear somewhere.  I thought about wooden letters, but decided I wanted something a little more subtle.  I was thrilled when I visited a local store called the Christmas Tree Shops and found all kinds of nautical stuff.  The store is a misnomer because it actually has nothing to do with Christmas, but that is besides the point.  I found lots of goodies including some rustic oars for $5.99 each.  I decided to use these to make the boys' room unique and personalized.  Here's how I did it.
     I started by cutting some contact paper to use as a stencil with my Cricut machine.  You could use the vinyl specifically for die cutting, but a roll of $1 contact paper did the trick here. I cut out the words "USS" then a slightly larger name and placed them on the paddles of the oars.  I pressed the contact paper tightly to the wood and dabbed acrylic paint lightly over the stencil in an up and down motion. A painting motion will make your paint bleed. It is also important to use art quality acrylic instead of the cheap craft stuff.  The cheap kind will make your letters bleed, and you will not have a clean edge. (When I say cheap I mean the kind on sale for $.50.) The good paint is thick and stays put.  The good news it that if you screw up, you can peel your stencil off and wipe away the paint with a wet cloth.

Here it is after I have peeled the contact paper off.

     Next I nailed the oars together on the back in two places.  I hung them on the wall with pre-fixed picture hooks.  You can always add these if they don't have them already. 

Isn't this a cute addition to the room?

Total Cost: $13

Time: A little more than an hour