Nautical Bathroom Redecorating: The Toilet

Recently, I've taken to putting those smell-good things in the bathroom because, well, it needs it. The containers aren't exactly pretty, though, so I needed a way to hide them that would still fit into the nautical theme.

Beautiful, no?

 One of my favorite craft stores still has their summer nautical decor on clearance, so I looked there for a solution. I found a neat candle holder and tea light holder, and they were both orange. (My theme has both blue and a bit of orange.) The larger candle holder was the perfect size for the scent thing, and I bought flame-less tea lights from the dollar store. Perfect for the just-in-case scenario of my toddler grabbing it. (Which she did eventually.)

Much better.

It's not the most amazing transformation, but it does make the toilet more aesthetically pleasing. It was also cost effective; regular prices of the starfish and candle holder were $16.99 each, but on clearance they came out to just under $9 for both.

I'm super excited for my bathroom to come together. I'm very slowly putting all the decor together, and crafting up the rest that would be too expensive to buy. Stay tuned for the rest of the transformation!

Nautical Bathroom Redecorating: Compass Rose

I'm currently in the process of redecorating my bathroom. There's nothing wrong with it, I suppose, but nothing really matched too well. I wanted a green and brown sort of color scheme, so I had put brown and green things for the bathroom on my wedding registry. My mother-in-law bought us the floor mat, shower curtain, and one set of towels, and that suited us for a long time. However, I wanted to put some actual decor in the bathroom. Maybe on the walls, on the counter, on the wall behind the toilet, anywhere to make it more "homey." Anyway, nothing I could find that was green and/or brown really tickled my fancy. I tried to paint some jars brown and green, but it only brought so much to the table.

It was time for a change.

Nautical stuff is apparently trending, and for some reason I'm really into it. Lots of stores, including my lovely craft stores, carry (carried) nautical decor, but the prices were a bit out of my budget. For the most part, I just waited until they had it on clearance. If you're lucky, the store will slowly mark everything down to the point of almost free, you just have to wait a while. The "paintings" I wanted (they weren't actual paintings, just prints on canvas) were still more than I wanted to spend, so instead I decided to paint some canvas myself since I'm not too bad in the art department.

I want two paintings for my wall: one of a compass rose, and one of the ocean, maybe with some boats. Here's the inspiration picture for the first painting:

I wasn't going to paint every part of this because there's a lot of stuff, but the most important parts, obviously.

I painted the background a light-ish blue, and then used a ruler and pencil for the compass parts. I painted it at an angle for a more abstract feel. After I got done outlining everything in pencil, I proceeded to paint. Oh, and I used a canvas size 8x10 inches.

Price of the canvas: $9 x 40% off coupon/sale = $5.40

Price of paint, blue and black (if you don't have any): $2

Total: $7.40

Compare to the original price of any 8x10 canvas print at the craft store: $19.99.

Yay savings!