Nail and string art crafternoon

Actually, it was more like crafterday and more since it took many many hours. But anyway. You might have seen this before. It's quite an in thing now. So before my weekdays are no longer free, Lil and I decided to have some fun with this!

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N A I L  &  S T R I N G  A R T

^ What you need ^

12mm Plywood (~A$11.70, Bunnings)

25x1.5mm Nails. Contains 215 nails. (~A$4.60, Bunnings)

Thread (~A$1 each, Spotlight)

The Plywood we bought was A1 size. The guys at Bunnings cut it into half for us for free. 

So we had an A2 piece each – that's the size of four normal A4 papers.

I used 7 of those rolls of thread for my project.

So, let's begin!

^ Pick words, trace them out ^

The words can't be too small, or you'll have a harder time weaving the thread around it. We chose to just have one word each. You can print the words, or do what we did – trace them off the computer (the screen makes a good lightbox) because the paper was huge.

^ Cut out paper, stick on board ^

Cut the edges of the paper so it'll be easier to tear out later. 

Stick it down with masking tape so it doesn't move around.

Lil's design is the top one with "YAY". 

She cut hers as a circle because she's doing a negative space design – you'll see it later. 

^ Nail it in, then tear off paper ^

Lil's circle has a grid design within, hence the squares.

Mine is a rounded font so I used many more nails. The round edges need more nails.

I probably used twice or thrice as many nails as Lil.

When you tear off the paper, there will be some specks of paper left (look closely). The small bits don't really matter. But the big bits are a bit of a pain to take off if you have as many nails as I did.

^ Thread ^

Loop over each nail to make sure the thread stays. 

Go round the outline first so you don't get confused later. 

This part is quite therapeutic and tiring at the same time. Therapeutic first because it's a repeated motion of going round each nail, then tiring because your neck is bend and your fingers keep scraping against the nails. But it's overall fun. 

^ Thread: Criss-cross ^

After that, you start doing criss-crosses between the nails to fill up the insides. 

^ Colours ^

You'll notice mine has different colours. It's because I wanted to create a gradient-like design. So I started with lots of dark blue criss-crossed at the "h", then just lightly at the "o". Then I used the next blue heavily on the "o", and lightly on the "m". And so on.

^ YAY! Lil's piece ^

It's not done yet. She's adding layers of colour to it I think. 

But meanwhile, it's looking good! A fun word complemented by a fun orange!

^ And here's mine. home. ^

It's done in the sense of the word "home" being complete, but it feels like it needs something else. I'll leave that for another time. Meanwhile, this sits where it greets us when we get home each day :)

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See more ideas on pinterest.