Studio M Creations + Design: Nautical/Maine Big Boy Room

Back when I was very pregnant with second son, my husband and I worked hard to transform our guest room into a Big Boy Room for our oldest. It took me forever to figure out what type of theme I wanted to go with for the room since there was nothing in particular that he was really crazy about. I perused the internet for bedding that I liked and found something that I loved at Land of Nod. It was adorable and reminded me of Maine (get a preview here) and the love that my husband and his family have for it with it's buoys. Since the bedding was red, white and blue I decided to go with navy and white stripes for the room. It was a BIG change from the previous beige that the guest room had been and I was nervous that it would be too much for the room, but I gave it a shot anyway and was pretty happy with the result!

The base coat. It made me nervous...such a different look!

To put the stripes on I went with the tried and true method of painting the base coat, putting the tape down outside of the lines and then painting over the tape with the base coat color.

Once this dried we painted over with the stripe color and got perfect crisps lines. It worked awesome once we found the right tape. The first painters tape I bought was terrible and started falling off the wall soon after we put it up! This picture shows the process BEFORE the tape was removed.

Crisp lines after. Only 3 walls to go!

Once the walls were finished, we just had to put in the furniture and the decorations. For the furniture, we got a twin bed from IKEA, a dresser that my in-laws had in storage which we painted white and put new hardware on, and some lockers that used to be in my brother-in-law's room, which we painted red. For the decorations I found some cute nautical things at Hobby Lobby, a rug and nautical lamp at Target and then some other props that I had purchased for the "Maine Event" 2nd birthday party and some that I already had around the house. Finally I found this piece of "art" at the church rummage sale which I immediately had vision for. While I felt a little bad at the thought of painting over Jesus, I also felt it would make a great door sign for the room.

The "artwork" I found at the church rummage sale.

So that is the back story. Here is the end result:

Bedding and Life-preserver pillow (Land of Nod), Bed (IKEA), rug (Target), scratch-off state map (gift from uncle), fishing buoys (made from white lantern balls half painted red), fishing net (Hobby Lobby).