In the Craft Club I belong to, we rotate the hosting duties each year - I love Christmas so I always tend to host the holiday craft. (In fact, I told the other Craf-tastic Mommas to just retire my name on the calendar for the winter holiday craft...I love it!)
In years past, I've tried to make the craft very holiday specific but this past holiday craft club, I was stuck. After looking through endless pins of holiday crafts, I had no idea what to do!
SIDEBAR: Some considerations if you're thinking about hosting a craft club and selecting a craft - try not to make it too challenging. You're only there for a few hours - not a whole weekend! If there's prep work that can be done ahead of time, by the hostess, in order to move things along on the actual night of crafting, it's a do-able craft. A good rule of thumb would be for the hostess to make the craft ahead of time to gauge timing. And don't forget to feed your guests - crafting can be labor intensive! END SIDEBAR.
I finally settled on doing string art for our holiday craft.
I had pinned this picture awhile ago as something I would like to tackle one day:
I had also seen some other string art ideas -a heart for Valentine's Day and a star for Christmas.
So I decided to take this string art idea and gear it towards Christmas - so I made a Christmas tree!
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| Mine (l), my sister's (r) |
Here were my materials:
- 2 x 2 piece of wood (see pic for thickness) from Home Depot
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| Shop Speak: I used wood with three big rows and two thin rows. |
- Pack of 1" Wire Nails (see pic)
- Strands of thread in your applicable color(s) - I got the 25m packs -->
- Your art template - cut out
- A hammer
- Paint (for the wood)
- Sandpaper (to sand the wood edges)
- Tape
- Patience
Here is the great thing about Home Depot. When I went to get wood for my personal craft, I found the perfect size and already cut up, 2x2. When I went back a few weeks later to get wood for the other Craf-tastic Mommas, they had different wood in the 2x2 slots - it wasn't the same thickness (like the picture above). They did, however, have the same thickness in the 4x2 slots - so what did I do? I pulled those 4x2 suckers out and asked the nice gentleman to cut them up for me - into 2x2 squares. They do it - for free!
One of the Craf-tastic Mommas actually wanted to do the 'dream' string art, shown above - so I had the nice gentleman cut the wood to fit the dream template. Awesome!
After bringing home the wood, sand it and paint it. TIP: If you don't have paint or have a specific color you want to get, just purchase one of those 'sample size' paints from Home Depot so you're not breaking the bank.
Place your art where you want it on the piece of wood, tape it down and start nailing along the perimeter - in one inch spaces.
Take out your paper template (if you're not planning on using it again, just rip it), and start stringing!
Here is where the PATIENCE comes in. If you purchase the same type of string (25 m), be careful while you string because it will get tangled...unless you're 1) super patient and uncoil the whole strand before you start stringing OR 2) if you just constantly check it while stringing to prevent tangling. I did neither, by the way.
While stringing, I also wrapped the string once around the nail head, instead of just going around and onto the next nail. I felt more secure knowing it was getting a good wrap around.
It's okay to hit up the same nail two times...even three times. It will look great!
After you're done stringing, just snip off all the ends, from where you started, restarted and then restarted again! Step back and look at what beautiful art you just created!
Here are some of the results from my Craf-tastic Momma friends.
TIP: If you find a template or graphic you'd like to string, just copy it, save it to a thumb drive and bring it to Kinko's - they'll resize it for you and print it on their jumbo printers!
I took my tree one step further by gluing some itty-bitty clothespins onto the board and attached some to the actual string of the tree so I could pin up all the wonderful photo cards we get for the holidays!
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| With mini clothespins |
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| With photo cards |
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