Great Gift Idea: Create Beautiful String Art Yourself

Would you like to create an individual, very personal gift yourself? How about combining crafting fun and art and creating a string art piece? Nails are hammered halfway into a solid base (e.g. a wooden board) and various yarns and threads are wound and woven between them, creating beautiful and original yarn pictures. These can be hung on a wall like conventional pictures or displayed as room decoration using an angled stand. A great gift for loved ones, friends or family members. Here is an example:

 

What you need for a string art piece

Materials:

• Solid base, for example a beech plywood board
• Enough nails, e.g. 200 steel nails (2.0 x 25mm)
• Coloured cord, threads or yarn
• Optionally a printed template on paper (if the motif is to be printed rather than drawn by hand)
• Optionally masking tape to secure the template/stencil

Tools:

• Hammer
• Ear protection if needed for sensitive ears
• Pencil for drawing the template
• Optionally scissors to cut out the paper template

Motif template:

• The template for the later string art piece. This can be a simple shape like a heart or clover leaf, or a more complex drawing. There are no limits to your creativity here. You can draw the template directly onto the wooden board with thin pencil strokes, or alternatively print/draw it on a sheet of paper.

 

How to create a string art piece

1. Choose a motif or think one up and create it yourself. Either print it onto a paper stencil first and attach it with masking tape, or sketch it directly onto the wooden board lightly in pencil.
2. Carefully hammer the nails into the wood along the motif. There should be approximately 1 cm of space between neighbouring nails. 
3. Once you have hammered in all the nails, the paper stencil can be removed (if used). Check that all nails are secure and none are still wobbly.
4. In the next step, the threads can be stretched around the nails. Connect all the nails with a cord and wrap the cord once around each nail before pulling it to the next one. You can stretch the cord in even patterns or criss-cross between the nails. Multiple colour combinations with different threads can also create great pictures.
5. At the last nail, a firm knot must hold the thread art together.

 

 

Motif ideas

There are no limits when it comes to choosing a motif. Motifs with a personal connection or special preferences work particularly well. Here are a few suggestions:

• Initials, first names or nicknames
• General shapes such as hearts, houses, clover leaves or stars
• Floral pictures, e.g. a cactus in a pot or a tulip, ideally combined with multiple colours
• Butterflies with colourful wings
• In a professional context, e.g. team names as a gift for colleagues
• Abstract colour plays or patterns

Do you like string art? Have you ever created such a work of art yourself? Do you have further tips or gift ideas? Feel free to leave a comment.

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