Sometime between building our coffee table and building our dining room table (see last post) we became those people with spare lumber lying around. Every time I walk into our basement (which is where we keep our lumber), that stockpile of wood is sitting there, challenging me to find a use for it.
This is what I came up with:
On a whim one day, I decided to make wall art. I had tried my hand at string art in the shape of Texas as a housewarming gift for my sister and her husband, so I thought I'd try something for our house.
First I had to decide what shape to use for our art. I like the way trees look in photos and artwork, so I searched the internet for a tree outline that I liked. It was important for the edges of the tree to have enough definition that the tree wouldn't look like a blob when the project was finished. Once I found an image I liked, I printed it out on an 8x11.5 piece of paper.
I took three spare pieces of wood we had and laid them down. Before I cut the wood, I wanted to play around with where the tree would be and figure out how wide to make the artwork overall. I decided I liked the tree best in the far right corner.
I cut the pieces of wood to 51" each, sanded them, and stained them with a stain we already had. Once everything was dry, I secured the pieces together using wood glue and flat brackets along the back.
While the wood dried, I got the rest of my supplies together: string, wire nails (16x1") and a hammer.
Rather than fill the shape of the tree with string, I decided to leave the tree empty and fill the space around it. That meant creating a border around the edge of the wood and around the tree. To spare myself the trouble of measuring, I used painters' tape to create the border and to give me a straight line to follow as I placed the nails along the border.
It was important to me to make the spacing between the nails as consistent as possible. I also wanted to make sure they were the same height throughout, so I scrounged through our toolbox and came up with the perfect solution: an allen wrench.
With the painters' tape down and my allen wrench in hand, I got to work. I started in the bottom left corner of the wood and worked my way along the bottom edge, placing my allen wrench between the nails as I hammered them in. That gave me the same space between the nails, and only allowed me to hammer until I hit the edge of the allen wrench. It was a tedious process, and it took me several hours a day over the course of a few days.
When it was time to outline the tree, I followed the outline of the shape as best I could. The good thing was knowing that in the end no one would know if one of the nails were hammered exactly in line with the picture. Once the outline was in place, I removed the paper image of the tree and was left with my outline.
Getting all of the nails in place was by far the most tedious (and loudest) part. Once the nails were in the fun started. Unlike the artwork I did for my sister, I wanted the string in this piece to be completely random. I started with the bottom left corner, tying a small knot around that nail to use as the anchor point. From there, I just went for it, with my only goal to make it look like I had no goal. Here are some close up images:
It turned out to be one of my favorite projects. I see this hanging on the wall in our office every day, and it makes me smile every time. It was most definitely a labor of love, but those are the best projects.
