How to make a driftwood sailboat

My father in law just celebrated his 60th birthday. My sister and law and I planned a little gathering to celebrate this milestone. We went with a beachy/sailboat theme since we were giving him sailing lessons for his birthday. I was in charge of decorating, and one of the things I came up with were these driftwood sailboats.

After about a half an hour of beach combing, I picked up nearly all the supplies I needed. I grabbed various sizes of driftwood and as many long skinny straight sticks as I could find. The rest of the supplies, I had on hand. I used muslin and a glue gun to piece them together.

I live in the Pacific Northwest. It's springtime...everything is wet. The driftwood was no exception. I wanted to expedite the process so I took my driftwood and sticks home put them on cookie sheets and cooked them in an oven on 250 degrees for about 2 hours.

The only real benefit from the cooking it seemed was that the bugs got cooked out. Yummo! Other than that, it didn't seem to dry the wood out any faster. It only succeed in making my house smell like a stinky beach on a super hot day!

I then paired up the driftwood and a stick, and sweet talked my hubby into doing the hard part.

He took calipers to the wood stick, measured it and found the right size drill bit (he tried one smaller than the measurement) and drilled a hole making sure he didn't go all the way through to the bottom. You need a real tight fit so the stick fits snugly in the drilled hole.

Don't you just love man hands doing all the work?!

I must apologize at this point for not having any pictures of the process of making the sails. Each driftwood piece is different, so I just measured how high up I wanted the sail and then how far out I wanted it on each side and cut at an angle on both pieces (you will end up with two triangles). I nearly failed geometry so you probably shouldn't trust me when I say it was a right triangle. Honestly, I have no idea what kind of triangle it is! I tried to always make one triangle just a bit smaller than the other.

Then I put a string of hot glue down each side of the mast (on the straight part of the sail) and secured the muslin to each side. At the bottom of the sail, I put a smaller stick that expanded almost the whole width and then rolled and glued the bottom part of the sail onto that making sure I used a fair amount of glue to attach both sticks in the center where they met.

I like how casual and beachy they are.

I also thought I would show you a few other details of the day. Isn't this cake amazing?! It had so many fun details from the handmade candy life preservers, to the various nautical flags. Wish I could take credit for making it, but I can't. My sister in law has a friend who makes these. Let me know if you are in the Seattle area and want her information.

This is pretty much how my four year old was for at least half of the party! He couldn't hardly wait until we cut into the cake.

I also decorated with lots of raffia, bottles filled with sand, and shells.

The bottle pictured on the right was his present. A scroll with the details of his sailing lessons rolled up inside like a message. I mod podged the birthday message on the outside of the bottle and even burnt the edges (seriously still amazed that I didn't light my house on fire this week!).

The banner was made with die cuts and scrapbook paper that was sand and shells.

Hope planning your next birthday party is smooth sailing!

I will be linking up to these parties