String Art...AKA Torture

So, as many of you might know, I love Pinterest. I knew, from the first time I ever heard of it, that it was going to be something I became very attached to, and engaged in. So much so that, I intentionally avoided joining Pinterest until after the birth of my son, because I knew I would need/want something to occupy my time during those sleepless nights. Boy, was I right!

Now, all this time later, I still love it. Brilliant idea, that, Pinterest. Maybe someday, I'll get to a fraction of the projects and/or recipes I have collected in there.

One project I did get to was string art. As you might know, after much deliberating, I chose a circus/rainbow theme for my daughter's room. I love it, and have so many great ideas, but it is taking sooo long to actually finalize everything, and bring it all together.

For awhile, I hemmed and hawed over getting a large monogram to hang over her crib. It's sophisticated, but girly, but it just didn't feel quite right.

When I stumbled across this on Pinterest, I knew what direction I was going to go.
I loved that she used cork board instead of wood. I love the look of wood on string art projects, but the idea of tapping all the nails in was very unappealing to me.

As I often do when considering a project, I started looking around for the items I'd need to complete the project. When I stumbled across this bulletin board on amazon, I had to get it!

 

Once the bulletin board arrived, I chose a font that I liked, printed Little Miss' name to the scale that I wanted, and tried to visualize the placement.

I then painted it white. First, I carefully painted over the black trim with white (I was initially disappointed when I received the bulletin board, as the trim is painted around the edge, instead of being raised, as I had initially expected). I was hopeful that, if I painted the edges first, when I went to paint over the cork, it would allow the trim to be distinguishable, albeit the same color. I then cut out the letters, taped them together, and taped them to the bulletin board.

I pushed the nails in around the outline of the letters, and it looked pretty cool!
This was all the easy part, though.

Once all the nails were in, I carefully pulled the paper out from between the nails.

I then took my embroidery yarn (I believe I used six colors), and started twisting it around the nails. I outlined the letters first, then cris-crossed them in the center. Honestly, this was a nightmare. Thankfully, I am really pleased with the result, but goodness, was it less fun to make than I thought! Ha! Someone called it "therapeutic" in one of the tutorials I read. Mmmm, well, I, for one, prefer a different type of therapy.

Even knowing how difficult it was, I would still totally do this again, and might even brave it again for other things in the future. I seriously love the way it turned out!

LIGHTS!

I finally finished the lamps for Little Miss' room!

I mentioned my plan in this post, and then have been doing random things around the house or in decluttering the room itself, so haven't made it to a lot of my projects. Meh.

I have, however, made progress. And, progress at all is better than nothing!

Without further delay, I give you the before pictures of the lamps again:

You'll notice that the lion is missing. I couldn't bring myself to paint him. I really just don't have a designated spot for him -- what baby/toddler needs three lamps in their room?!? And he is sooo cute!
Since I was unsure, I decided to wait. I may end up painting him and using him anyway, if I can find a spot for him, or I might just try to resell him on the online garage sale sites for what I bought him for. We'll just have to see.

I got Krylon white, satin finish spray paint, taped off the cords and electrical parts of the lamps, then got to it!
I also got rid of the lamp shades, as they wouldn't match with the color scheme.
I found these AWESOME, geometric, textured lampshades at Target, picked up a pair, and voila!

I love them! Seriously, I love them! They're so whimsical!

I'm getting everything together for my next projects for her room, and should (fingers crossed!) be posting those soon!

It is coming together! I'm so pleased and excited to get my Little Miss in her room!

Stay tuned for more!