14 Before 2014: "Loving Home" Nail and String Art

I am so proud of myself! I finished another thing from my "14 Before 2014" list this week:

#14: "Home" art (which I renamed in the title of this post).


Since M and I are both living outside of our beloved home states (New Mexico and Michigan, respectively), I thought it would be so nice to have a reminder of where we came from hanging in the house. I found a really cute tutorial on how to make nail and string art here. This girl makes the word "hello", but I have seen it done with state outlines before, and decided to try it out.

Recently we finally removed this rickety old shelf from our bedroom. Seriously, this thing was BAD. It was something that M brought with him from his days as a bachelor, and it was one of those particle-board bookshelves that comes in a box from Target or Walmart. It only had one of its shelves left, and it was so loose and rickety that it was leaning to one side! It was time for a change. Luckily, though, I was able to put the remaining shelf board to good use! It made the perfect background for our beautiful home states! 

First, I googled "outline of Michigan" and came up with several. I found one that suited me, and I printed it out and did the same for New Mexico, and for Georgia (which is where we met and where we are currently living). I decided, last minute, to include Georgia. Here is a picture of the outlines before I decided to include Georgia:

I cut out and taped the states onto the board in the arrangement that I wanted. I decided to put Georgia in the middle because it is where we met. :)

I will mention now that I got most of the materials I used at Walmart. M and I live closest to a Walmart, and although I love craft stores and really prefer to get my craft items there (they have a bigger selection, and Michael's has great coupons!), I am sometimes unable to make it into town. Anyway, I used small nails from the "nail section" at Walmart, and I used Red Heart thread in cream and red.

So... next, I turned the board over and hung 5 saw-tooth picture-hangers.

So here's where things get dicey: I got super engrossed in watching crime shows, and I forgot to take pictures!!! That is why I included the YouTube tutorial. :) My bad!!

I hammered nails in the board to outline each state and then I made a bigger heart than the one I originally drew and I stuck it on and outlined it when I was finished with the state outline. After outlining the state, I used the cream-colored thread to wind it back and forth across the state and the heart. I avoided covering the heart. It was hard to cover the whole state, but I did my best and did not use any real method. I just tried until I thought it looked good. :)

After that, I wound the thread around the outsides of the states (wind around each nail to anchor the thread and then keep going) to outline them and then tied them off. I did the same thing with the heart in red thread. Voila!

Here is the finished product:

Hope you like it! How does your decor reflect where you grew up? I would love to hear about it! :)