Looking for a fun way to dress-up your boys room? Vintage Nautical is one of my favorite ways to decorate for my little guy. Come learn how I created these painted nautical signal flags for our little guy’s room…
• This post brought to you by Michaels •
I’ve always been inspired by vintage nautical pieces. All of the fun gadgets and gizmos, the style of the ships, the anchors and I especially love vintage nautical signal flags.
One of my picker friends here in Nebraska does a fabulous job collecting vintage nautical items. Here are a few of Cody’s from The West Place, vintage nautical flags among other items.
Aren’t they cool?! I purchased a flag from him about a year ago with the intention of using it for my little boy’s room in our new house. The one that I have is (if you look at the chart above) the letter “Z”. It’s colors are amazing! The perfect red, blue, mustard yellow and black. I’m using that as my inspiration for Gage’s room.
If you’re following along, Gage and I introduced you to Davy Jones, Gage’s new octopus wall art for his room…
I thought it would be fun to create a few more nautical signal flags to go along with Davy Jones. I was thrilled to find out that the Michaels Maker challenge for July is craft paint! Of course this is a perfect opportunity to create these fun flags using a wood canvas that I found at Michaels and the NEW DecoArt Americana Premium Acrylic Paints.
If you don’t already know, Michaels has all kinds of new craft paints in-store now. You need to check it out! They have acrylics, milk paint, chalk paint… All kinds of specialty paints. Not to mention stencils, canvases, brushes and more. Painting with stencils makes things really easy so definitely pick those up. I actually just painted my front door with paint that I purchased at Michaels, the new DecoArt Curb Appeal paint. Who knew you could find that kind of paint at Michaels!
I’m also totally in love with these Art Wood Panels that you can find at Michaels. I wanted my flags to look vintage and a normal canvas wouldn’t be able to create the kind of look I was going for. Nor could I find wood that would look somewhat like a flag. Other wood options would add a lot more bulk and I didn’t want that. This wood canvas is perfect.
Gage and I talked it over and decided that we would create flags for the letters W-X-Y to go with our actual Z flag.
Supplies for the Painted Nautical Signal Flags
DecoArt Premium Acrylic Paint
DecoArt Premium Medium • Matte
Artist Loft Art Wood Panel Value Pack
Painter tape
Sponge Brushes
Painted Nautical Signal Signs Instructions
Each flag is going to have a different process due to the designs of the signal flags. You will have to figure out how to best create the design for the letters you create. I’ll show you how I created the letter “Y” flag.
First, I painted the base layer in Yellow Oxide and let it dry. I only did one coat of paint because I was planning on distressing the sign so why make my job harder with an extra layer of paint.
Next, rather than busting out my mad math skills (of which I have none) I layed 2 inch painters tape diagonally across the entire board with the tape bumping right up to the base of the other tape.
Then, I removed every other strip of tape to then create perfect diagonal stripes. I then painted the red stripes on the board. For this stripe, I did paint two light layers of paint. I wanted a truly bold color even though I was still going to be distressing the board.
After the paint was dry, I pulled the tape to reveal the PERFECT stripes!
I love how you can still see the wood grain on these art boards. Not to mention, look at those beautiful bold colors. I love this paint! Next, I used my detail sander to distress the board a bit to give this faux flags the vintage look.
I LOVE how they turned out. I can’t wait to see how they look in Gage’s room when it’s finished.
Looking for more painting inspiration? Michaels has you covered. You can follow along on The Glue String (the Michaels blog) OR, checkout these other projects from the other Michaels Makers…
