Pottery Barn Inspired Wood Map

You may remember that my little guy is currently in a pirate phase. When I set out to decorate his room, I was looking for pieces that were easy to make, relatively inexpensive and could be used in different parts of the house ~~when~~ in case he changes his mind on decor. As it happened, I was strolling through my garage looking for things to repurpose when I happened upon this plywood. I have no idea what we used the rest of the piece for, or where this even came from for that matter, but it was the perfect size to go over my guy’s dresser. So a project was born.

My hubby and I had just returned home from a Caribbean cruise to celebrate our ten year anniversary and we had been lucky enough to hit up both St. Thomas and St. John. We snorkeled at the unbelievably beautiful Trunk Bay and had completely fallen in love with the island. Of course there is plenty of pirate history there as well, so when I decided that a map would fit well on the plywood that was the first place that I thought of. After searching for images that I liked online, I settled on the one above (mainly because you can clearly see Trunk Bay) and went to work drawing it out on my overhead projector. Only later, after the project was finished, did I discover that this is the image that Pottery Barn uses for their wall mural.

I stained my plywood and let it dry, then I used my overhead projector to trace the image onto the board. The good thing is that with the natural curvature of the land, I didn’t need to make exact lines. I wanted it to look imperfect. I used acrylic paint to color the islands and when that was dry I traced the outlines with a black Sharpie. My hubby (who is a much better artist that I am) went in with a couple of colored pencils and added the mountains and water marks.

This was a super simple project that you could use with just about any theme. Decorating a room with princesses? Go ahead and paint the silhouette of your favorite one. Making an ocean themed room? How about doing this with some friendly sea creatures? As always, please feel free to leave your questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you!