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!