Bathroom Decorating

Two posts in two days! I'm on a roll! I decided this week to finally do something about decorating our guest bathroom. In our old apartment, it was pretty much just "the dogs' bathroom" and we didn't use it for anything else. Now that both dogs are housetrained and we can keep it nice, I decided to make it nice for us and guests to use. I was shopping with a friend a few weeks ago at Pottery Barn and got inspired with all of their ocean-themed stuff... but I knew I could do it cheaper.



This first photo, I'm so proud of. I had an image in my head of what I wanted to do, and it turned out EXACTLY like what I wanted. Which is pretty rare, actually, especially for a technique I've never tried before. I found a blocky stenciled image of a seahorse (an actual stencil would have worked, too, but I didn't find one I liked - instead I found a photo on Flickr of a seahorse that had been stenciled on to a wall), printed it out, and taped it to the window of my sunroom with my cut-down piece of cardstock over it. The window worked as a lightbox, so I could trace the outline of the image, then I cut out each piece with a craft knife. I mounted it on sparkly navy-blue paper (I love how the shimmer ties in the ocean theme) and hung it over the towel rack.



The counter was where I copied the Pottery Barn idea - I found some super-cheap vases and candles at Hobby Lobby (they're half-off this week) and a thrift store - I particularly like the square tealight vase - it reminds me of a lantern. Hobby Lobby also provided me with big bags of different kinds of seashells, so each vase has a slightly different mix.

Since my seahorse turned out so well, I'm thinking I might do a starfish or octopus for another wall - I'll post it if I end up doing it.