Easy DIY Sailboat Decor for Summer

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I don’t know what it is but I’m feeling all of the beachy, nautical, summer vibes this year! And there’s nothing more beautiful than a good ole sailboat!! While I can’t tell you how to build a REAL sailboat for Summer (although I wish), I can tell you how to build easy DIY sailboat decor for Summer… and that’s almost as good, right???

what you’ll need

cardboard
drop cloth
wooden skewer
pencil
scissors
mod podge
pen
paint

how to make easy diy sailboat decor for summer

Cut out 2 differently-sized right triangles from your drop cloth. You want these to have a bit more rounded edges than a traditional triangle, and they don’t need to be perfect! You can see what I’m talking about in the picture below!
To give these a bit more stiffness and shape, you’re going to paint mod podge all over them.
While that dries, it’s time to sketch out the actual “boat” part of this project! I just eyeballed this and sketched with a pencil until I got it where I wanted it. You can see the shape in the picture below. It’s probably about 3 inches wide or so!
Then, as you can see above, I used a sponge brush to paint it brown. To give it more of a “wooden” feel, I took an off-white paint lightly on a sponge brush and ran it across the cardboard, going left to right only, not up and down! It makes the boat appear more wooden than if it was just a solid brown!
After doing that, I used that same sponge brush with the same off-white color and made about an inch thick strip across the top. This is just a style preference and allowed me a spot to name my ship!
After the boat is painted, it’s time to work on the sails. I wrote on my sail since many of the pictures of real sailboats online have that! I just think it makes it look that much more “authentic (well however authentic a cardboard sailboat can really be).”
I used about a 12 inch wooden skewer to hold my sails in place. At first I tried to make the hole in the drop cloth using the skewer, and then switched to an ice pick. The easiest way though would probably be to make a tiny cut in the drop cloth using scissors and then just slide it right on through. You will slide the bigger triangle on, then the smaller one, then the other side of the smaller one, and then the bigger one. You can see what I’m talking about in the photo below!
Then, as you can see above, I used hot glue to attach the end of the skewer to the back of the cardboard boat!
Lastly, just make sure to fluff up your sails and get them situated how you want them!