Nautical Dorm Decor {Tutorials}

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I have been meaning to write this post for about 6 months now!  But time flies and I have been SO busy.  Luckily I am finally getting around to it because my favorite thing is nautical anything!  And I know many of you feel the same so I hope you enjoy!

My dorm room did not start out as nautical but eventually it has become that way and I love it!

First are my hand painted nautical cork boards!  Get the full tutorial back here.  A quick summary on the how to is to go get a 3-pack of cork boards at Ikea and paint nautical shapes onto them.  It really is that easy!

 

Next is my 'Anchors Away' hanging picture.  I got is at Kirkland's Home quite a while ago, so I am not sure if they still have it or not.  Kirkland's is a really great place for unique home decor though, and they seem to keep the nautical theme in their rotation, so I am sure you would be able to find something great!

Finally is my hand painted nautical flag canvas.  Keep reading for a tutorial on that!

I got a pack of 9 or 10 little canvases (8" x 10") at Walmart for $10.  When I purchased them I had so many big ideas!  Yet this is the only one I've used so far - 4 months later.  Oh well, thats a story for another time, onto the tutorial!

(Please excuse my pictures, as you can see I made this on my dorm room floor using a lovely Forever 21 bag to keep paint from getting everywhere :)

I just used the paints from an art set I've had forever that I purchased at Michael's.  You can kind of see it in the corner of this pic:

 Then I went to trusty Google to see what all the nautical flags looked like.  You can do your own search or click here for the one I found.  I used a ruler to space out and draw the squares somewhat evenly.  Then I just free-handed the flags inside each square.

 I used red, white, blue yellow, and black paint.  As you can see from this close up it is FAR from perfect, but hanging on my wall it looks nice and really brings the nautical theme of the room together.  After I took this picture I also took a black Sharpie and drew around each square to better define them.

And one final thing: nautical bracelet!  So this isn't "decor" but I just wanted to share it with you :)

I found these little anchor charms on eBay (I think I got 50 for $5 or something - super cheap!) and then made a simple friendship bracelet attached to it.

Its nothing too special but I really like it.  Maybe I'll put the other 49 charms to use soon and create something new ;)

Thanks for reading and don't forget to follow me on Instagram! kraftiekatie

DIY Nautical Cork Boards

It seems like the world is obsessed with nautical things lately and I am no exception.  Anchors, sails, and whales and let's not even begin to talk about navy blue and white stripped anything!  Something about these images and color schemes is so appealing to me and makes me happy :)

So of course when it came time to move back to school I wanted to bring the nautical with me to brighten my days!

I saw an idea on Pinterest (where else?) using little cork boards from IKEA and since I am lucky enough to live right by an IKEA I popped in one weekend and grabbed myself a 3-pack!

The Pinterest idea, you may have seen it before, its pretty popular, is to cover these cork board circles with fabric.  I however did not have any nautical fabric (tragedy!) so I resorted to another solution.

Paint!  I don't know what is wrong with me but I am in a painting phase lately.  It is really fun!

On to the tutorial! Yay!

Here is what you need to look for in IKEA:

Even if you don't have much time you can go in and get some, they are right by the registers (at least in my store) so you can just go in the exit to avoid an hour long maze!

Next you need to go online and find some nautical images.  Try to choose relatively simple ones, unless of course you are an expert cutter and painter :)

I just searched google for nautical shapes and copied and pasted the ones I liked into Microsoft Word.  If you can't find an image of just an anchor or just a sailboat, just copy and paste the whole image and then use the crop feature to select the area with your favorite image.  I then made the image bigger and printed in gray scale.

The next step is to cut them each out, very carefully.  This takes a while and isn't that fun, especially when you get to the middle of the wheel (I used an exact-o knife - be careful with those things!).

Here are my cutouts on my cork-boards.  So the next step is to outline the images onto the cork.  I forgot to take a picture after I completed that step (sorry about that!) but basically when you outline them you will create a slight indent into the cork with the pen which will help you keep the paint in check later.

So after quite a bit of tedious painting, here is my finished product:

What do you think?? I love them!  Leave me a comment with any questions or just to say hi!

Thanks so much for reading by blog :)

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There's a First Time for Everything!

Well, well, well... I actually did it!!  I made my first dress without any pattern or tutorial!!  Now this may not seem like much of an accomplishment for some but for me this is amazing!  The dress actually fits and looks wearable!  I am just so excited!

Please let me know what you think in the comments!!

The striped fabric used to be a body pillow cover if you can believe it, I like to buy any inexpensive fabric I can get my hands on!  For example, the body pillow cover was on clearance a Target for about $3 and I figure it was over a yard and I tore the zipper out of it to re-use!  Great deal!  Any way I used some fabric from that and then I had 1 yard of navy fabric in my stash which worked great for the skirt and there was just enough for the straps and a little bow too!

I can't wait to get more experience with clothes and finally be like a designer! 

Sorry for all the exclamation points... I'm just a little excited :)

!!!

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