Coastal Decor

I'm redoing our guest room, the former man-cave of our youngest son.  Since many of our guests don't live near the ocean, I decided to give the room a full-on beach-y feel.  I'm not usually a fan of "theme" rooms, but since we live very close to the ocean, we have the street beach-cred to pull it off. 

I found lots of inspiration at one of my favorite blogs, Completely Coastal.  This site is full of wonderful beach decor and ideas for using all those shells and beach treasures.   Then flipped through the Pottery Barn catalog for more ideas.  It's no secret that I love their ideas, but not their prices!  Like many crafty-types, I look at their stuff and my first thought is, "How cool is that" and my second is, "I can totally make that!" 

I've seen these bottles in very pricey catalogs - these are from Wisteria.  These shells are soldered on and that's beyond my capabilities, but I thought I could recreate this look.  I started out by gluing paper "caps" onto the bottle tops to avoid having the "solder" drip into the bottle.  I used grout for the solder and was glad I had the little top on - it gave a firm platform and did prevent droppings inside the bottle.  I swirled it onto the bottle top, and frankly, it looked pretty rough.  Once it dried a bit, I was able to pat it smooth and make it follow the contours of the bottle.



I painted the grout dark blue - thought the black was too harsh for my color scheme and then glued on the shells.  I couldn't resist adding a tag to one and wrapped one with twine.







Love my free shell bottles!

Next a Pottery Barn knock-off based on these lanterns from PB.  Boston Daughter bought this lantern for me and now it have been PB-ized:











I saw this somewhere and can't remember which chi-chi catalog.  This one was easy - wrapped a glass cylinder with burlap and then tied on some muslin-stamped ribbon I made.  Some sand, a candle, shells and done.



Stay turned for the big reveal!