Island Related Wall Décor

I spend a lot of time (still) trying to ready my shop to open. Including days just stripping a hand rail that was painted white. It leads upstairs to where I have three bedrooms that are currently being used for storage and need a good painting. I've painted the sides of the stairway walls and some of the upstairs hallway. They were all in poor condition, yellowed from smoke, and needed a good covering primer before I painted them.

This is a "before" photo, I haven't taken an "after."

Because of this time consuming and uncreative work, I need to stop every now and then and make something to sell in the shop. If you are creative, you will know what I mean!

Because my store will be in an area that gets tourists from late May until late September, (and that's being optimistic)  I need to have some tourist type products that relate to the beautiful island I live on.

So, I've been working on mermaids, lobsters, anchors, boats, lighthouse, cottage and beach themed items. I'll just show one today, because although I have photos, I really haven't much time these days for blogging, so they aren't organized yet.

I got this idea from seeing something similar but larger, on a couple blogs and thought I'd try it.

I cut three 15 1/2" long pieces out of a 1" x 4" board and painted one piece light blue, one darker blue and one beige/brown. As you can see, I didn't paint a solid colour, rather some variations and purposely visible brush strokes:

Then I sanded each piece:

And then put a liquid stain over top and wiped off most of it:

After that dried I added a top coat of polyurethane:

It was fun and easy to do, and a distraction from painting walls, but I feel it needs something else... a lighthouse or boat maybe?  (Or even the letters PEI in the bottom right corner for Prince Edward Island.)