DIY String Art

I've been busy making things to hang on the walls of our bedroom (States Art, DIY Painted Canvas), and I needed just one more to hang on the wall above my nightstand. I've been seeing a lot of string art lately, and decided to give it a try. Since it's in our bedroom, I thought a heart theme would be appropriate. When I was googling around for ideas, I came across this one:

 

source

I really like how "Love" is on top of the heart itself, and I like the two-tone look.

I also found this string art:

here

I like the monochromatic look of this one, and the hollow letters are a nice contrast to the string heart.

I also found some "love" string art where the word love was written in a cursive font and the string filled in the letters. I liked the idea of "love" written in cursive, and decided to put that in a heart.

This was a fairly inexpensive project since I had some of the materials already.

Materials:
Wood panel (painted)
3/4" wire nails
string
1x2 (stained)

The wood panel is leftover from the desktop of the desk I built in our rental. I cut it up for another project awhile ago, and this was the only piece left. It was about 22"x24", and the only thing I did to it was to give it a couple coats of white paint, which I had sitting around from painting trim in the house. I used just over two boxes of 3/4" wire nails that I purchased from Lowes. I used almost three rolls of string that I purchased from wallyworld (see picture below for the brand). The 1x2 pieces were scraps from our scrap pile and the stain was leftover from when I stained the dining table, sofa table, and shredder cover.

I first did some searching for a nice cursive font that would work well with what I intended to do. I ended up downloading the Marcelle Script, which is a free font, but I don't remember the exact site- shouldn't be too hard to find though.

I had to pull the letters closer together because they were too far apart for the look I wanted. Even then, the letters didn't actually connect to each other, so I drew in the connecting parts, as you can see above. You can also see where I shaded in the weird distressing in the letters. This font has a great shape in general, but the distressing was a bit distracting and unnecessary for this project, so I just colored over them.

After I liked how the letters looked, I cut a large heart around them. Once I was happy with the shape, I started marking off where I wanted the nails to go. I spaced them 1/2" apart, though in a couple areas in the word the markings were a little closer to preserve the proper curvature of the letters.

Then I started hammering 3/4" nails into the wood. This project has a lot of repetition, but that's what Netflix is for, right?

 I ran out of nails and had to get more

Once all the nails were in, I removed the paper. Pulling the paper off the letters was a pain since the nails went through the paper. The edges of the heart were super easy to take care of.

bad night time photo

all nails weren't completely straight, but I tried

I used almost three full spools of this thread that I found at wallyworld. It's a nice gray color that has some shine to it.

I ran out of string (I only bought two spools originally) at 10 pm during a big snowstorm. Needless to say, it took me another couple days to finish this project. While I was waiting for the weather to clear up, I attached the frame that I had cut and stained at the beginning of the project, back when I cut and stained the wood for the frame for the canvas I painted.

Once I made it back to the store, I finished filling in the string, then outlined the letters and the heart.

I had originally planned on filling in the letters in red, rather like the top inspiration photo I included above, but I decided I liked it better this way, so I left it alone.

This was an oddly soothing project. Between the repetition and finding ways to fill in all the spaces, I quite enjoyed the process. I might have to do another string art project just to have some more zen time :)

Once I was finished with the front, I screwed some screws into the back and wound some wire around them, then hung the whole thing in our room. I really like how it turned out and now I'm thinking of doing the kids' names in string art for their rooms. I've got most of the materials already....