String art is a type of design that was popular in the 1960s. Sting art is made by using nails or pins and colored strings to form interesting geometric patterns and shapes. Simple to do and fun to make, string art is an art form open to all skill levels!
How do I know? Well because this year for the county fair, the oldest country kid, who is 9, decided to give it a try and I think he did a wonderful job with his “howling wolf.”
So how does one get started in this folkie art medium?
Simply hit the internet! There are more patterns and tutorials out there then you can shake a stick at! But what if you want to do something unique? Well if you are like my son, who loves wolves, a simple image search lead us to an outline he was excited to try.
I simply saved the image to my computer and then placed it in a word document, sizing it for the board we had, and printed off a copy. We then laid out the image on the board, and my son went to town hammering in nails around the edge of the image.
Once the nails were in, we simply ripped the paper off the board and nails. He might have enjoyed that part a little too much! Boys and destruction…. To get him started I tied one end of some brown embroidery floss to the bottom left corner nail. From there he simply went nail to nail, wrapping the string around each one till he had the outline finished. He made two complete “laps” around the outside boarder before beginning to “fill in” the middle.
Once the outline of the image was stringed in, still using the same, single piece of embroidery floss, he began “filling in” the center of the image. With string art, the key is to go back and forth, up and down across the image in a logical manner. Logical is not always something a 9 year gets but he could understand, go to the next diagonal nail across from the one you are on!
I think his first attempt turned out pretty nice and so did the judge at the county fair! We had so much fun learning this new (old) art form, that I see us making many more of them over the cold winter months. With just a few low cost items and your imagination…..who knows what you could string up next! Me, I’m going to try butterflies!
What a great idea and it looks fantastic. Thank you for sharing at Good Morning Mondays. Blessings
It was a fun project 🙂
You always have such interesting posts, Mindie. I'm not creative however even I could do this – I think! Thanks again for linking up with us at #WednesdaysWisdom nd see you next week.
If my 9 year old with a short attention span can do it, so can you!
What a fun project! It turned out great.I've seen these string art projects, but never took the time to find out just how they are done. Visiting from Party in Your PJs.
They are so fun and easy to make! I think my 9 year old did a great job, thank you for agreeing!
I forgot all about string art! I used to love doing that as a kid!
Fun times! 🙂
Already planning to try this with my 3 guys!!
I hope you have as much fun as we did!
I'll have to give this a try – I love art ideas where it's difficult to mess them up! 😉
There is no right or wrong in art, at least in this house!
Love this idea and how you can create any picture! So fun and a great decoration! 🙂 I am featuring this over at Making Memories Mondays going on now! 🙂
Cathy@threekidsandafish{dot}com
Aww thank you! How nice to be acknowledge 🙂