Patriotic String Art

String art fascinates me and I wanted to try making one that is personal to me...so I made one to celebrate the great country I live in. It was a fun challenge to make a string art outline of the USA with the colors of our flag and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out...

I cut out a board of reclaimed wood that is about 5x10 inches. I sanded it lightly and stained it.

Meanwhile I printed out an outline of the USA to fit my board with a heart right of the center. I did this so that I could connect the heart to Florida and the North-East states with thread.

When the stain was dry, I taped my printout to the board and started hammering nails along the heart, then along the outline. I used linoleum nails from Home Depot.

Tip: Start at a spot that isn't too crowded so your poor fingers don't have to squish to hold the nail in place when you get to the end and there's tons of nails everywhere. 

This took several days with plenty of breaks, but it was a great way to get out any stress :).

Once the nails were hammered in, I took the paper off and started winding thread from the outline to the heart in the middle, and back out again. I started with blue in the upper-left area, then red along the rest. Once I was done with red, I used white thread in the same area as red to create "stripes". I tied off each thread and put a dab of super glue on the knots so they wouldn't come untied.

You can add a hanger on the back or just lean it against something to display.

Thank you Crafts by Amanda for the inspiration! Happy Memorial Day!