Looking for creative ideas for your beach house? I’m sharing 11 fun, creative ideas that are super easy on a budget.
Over the years, as my sisters and I helped my mother decorate the beach house here on the Cape, there was one overriding theme.
affordable
It’s seriously one of my favorite words.
Or as I like to say….Deal sensitive.
I think we shopped every thrift store and yard sale on the Cape to collect the most unique pieces of art you’ve ever seen.
The walls of this house are living proof that it doesn’t have to be expensive to be beautiful.
I see these pieces every summer, but I wanted to introduce them to you.
I thought it might be fun to take an art tour.
Nothing says find inspiration by the ocean like a thrift store or yard sale.
Looking for creative, inexpensive nautical ideas for your walls?
Grab some coffee and let’s take a tour.
1. Name the room
This is a fun idea for a vacation home.
wait
I think this would be really beautiful in any home.
We named all the rooms in the house. I live in a Nantucket room. The basement bedroom suite is called the Woods Hall. There are also Sagamore and Falmouth and Chatham.
My sister painted these signs and they are hanging on the door of every room.
2. Framed maps
Maps are everywhere here.
They give them out at visitor centers and I found the cutest one at the thrift store yesterday for only $5.
This has been in the house since I was reading the Nancy Drew books.
It’s a little bumpy and the frame is a little distressed, but I know I’m in the cap when I walk down the hall and see this.
3. Framed needlepoint
Needle point pieces are everywhere here.
You can find them at thrift stores (and sometimes they still need to be finished).
Look at how beautiful this scene is with the boats and the lighthouse.
Special cap in needle and thread.
4. Vintage anything
I literally have no idea what this is.
I wish I had a really good story for this—like it came from my great uncle’s boat and is an official schooner watch.
But the truth?
I think we just found it at a thrift store.
Moral of the story? Looks great on any vintage wall.
5. Nautical String Art
This piece is from my bedroom.
I got it from a Christmas tree shop years ago, but it would be so easy to recreate.
Draw a shape (a crab, starfish, or lobster would be cute), then hammer the nails in and wrap the coordinating wire.
Keep wrapping until you have completely outlined the painted shape.
6. Handmade needle point
I love thrift stores in the Cape.
I think they are a different situation than McKinney’s thrift stores.
A lot of people are vacationing here and a lot of people are needlepoint.
Look at this needlepoint made of rope.
And the poetry that is on the piece.
You can find needle points like this at cape thrift stores.
7. Hand drawn flag icon
Did you know that there are flags for every number and letter?
So I took the number associated with each flag and made this icon.
If you look at the numbers associated with the flag, it translates to 1957.
This is the year our beach house was built.
Isn’t that cool?
A sign with a story.
And here it is Here’s how you can paint a sign like this too.
8. Handpainted art
Now we come to the emotional part of our art tour. This is one of my very favorite things in the house.
My grandmother was an artist.
you can read All about the lessons I learned from her painted stool here.
And if you saw My Mother’s Tour of Her Bedroom She talks about this artwork.
This is a painting she did in Kennebunkport, Maine.
9. House needle point
My grandmother also used needles on this part.
She made needle points for each of her houses and then added her names.
I think there is a series of six of these houses – different houses that my mother lived in growing up.
You can see my mother Talked about this during a tour of his room here.
10. This hand-carved artwork
This is a piece that hangs over the fireplace in our living room.
My grandmother bought it years ago, and I’ve never seen it before.
The wooden slats feature a hand-carved ocean, with hand-carved sailboats sailing across the ocean.
11. These handmade art pieces
And now? I wanted to close this whole artwork discussion with one of my contributions to the porch walls.
I made these pieces from random pieces of scrap wood we had in the basement.
SAIL is one of the best places on the planet that is no longer in business, the often imitated, but never duplicated, “Christmas tree shop.”
Then I hot-glued the shell to a piece of wood and tied the rope in a knot and glued it to another board.
I know what you are thinking.
Even if the art hangs in the beach house….
….This artwork is in the Contemporary Coastal Museum of Art.
But I have to “draw the line” at that point. 🙂
PS My mother and my family read this blog. Any story with this art I missed? Feel free to share. 🙂
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