My Heart is in Florida

Meghann sent me a picture of what she called “string wall art” she made…I never heard of it. She did Florida with a heart in it, swoon, I fell in LOVE! I was so eager to get to the weekend and make one for our home. She sent me the inspiration she got from Pinterest and I began googling the heck out of “string art” to get ideas and figure out how I wanted to accomplish mine.

I am really, REALLY, bad at reading directions or tutorials or following any type of instructions. I’m one of those, I will figure it out as I go, kind of people. This is ok for most projects I do, however this one was a bit more challenging and AFTER I started the project I realized that I probably should have read the tutorial.

First I took another piece of that wood I got from Lowes, and I distressed the edges and corners making it more round. Same as I did here with the chalkboard. *Side note: I paid $6 for the entire board and asked the nice man at Lowes to cut it in three pieces for me. He measured it, made the lines markings, made sure everything was lined up and cut me three pieces from this one piece of wood. Awesome…until I took it to the cart and realized they were ALL THREE different sizes. Guess it didn’t really matter, but it was pretty funny to me that he took the time to measure, mark, re-measure, and cut for them to still not be equal. I mean he could have saved about 15min and just cut the dang things. Moving on…

Next I painted the board a pretty light blue color.

While waiting for it to dry, I made salt and pepper shakers.

Then it was the tedious work of nailing approximately 260 nails into one piece of wood. This is where reading the tutorial would have been beneficial.

I laid the piece of paper on the board and nailed along the outline of the state. Then the outline of the heart. As hubby is in the background “how are you going to remove that paper” and I respond “oh I’m sure it just pulls off”…it didn’t! The tutorial says, and I suggest, cutting your state out, and the heart, then put the nails around the paper then you can just remove the paper after all the nails are in…that makes so much sense!

Side note: Hubby and I spent a great deal of time debating over the nails to buy…again I did not read the tutorial. These are the ones we got and I recommend them because there is a good head to keep your string from slipping off.

Then it was time to string. I recommend making your heart bigger than mine, again suggested in the tutorial, because then you wont have to string the same nail so many times.

And finally, she’s finished. I am really happy with how it turned out and I cannot wait to hang it up. I love how the blue really contrast with our walls and I love that it represents who we are and where we are from.

 

P.S.

Lessons I learned: read your tutorials and instructions. AND it DOES matter where the heart goes, according to hubby you do not want your “heart in gator country (Gainesville)” but you have to be able to string to it. I had to move my heart northwest from its original location because it was too close to Gainesville. Sorry to my gator friends and family reading this, its how us Noles think!