One last Christmas project! I made this for a friend who collects heart ornaments. I couldn’t post about before today because I hadn’t given it to her yet. Also because I hadn’t finished making it.

The other day I pinned these adorable state shape string art ornaments from Done is Better than Perfect.

 

 

….and that’s what got me thinking about making a string art ornament.

I drew a heart and asked Dave to jigsaw it out of the leftover plywood from our chalkboard baby gate (which, incidentally, is working really well so far…except that Abe LOVES to scrape his fingernails across it over and over again. This is highly unpleasant).

 

Then he sanded down the edges:

 

(I don’t think he was as safety conscious about his sanding as that guy on the back of the sandpaper, though. He’s ready for anything!)

…and handed it back off to me.

I stained it with some dark walnut stain (I wiped it off after a few seconds, so it’s not as dark as dark walnut often is). And then started hammering some tiny little finishing nails into it. As will be clear from the pictures, I just kind of eyeballed the spacing:

 

Then I took some red embroidery thread and tied it on one of the nails:

 

And started winding it around the nails. Just kind of randomly. I wasn’t happy with it the first time, so I started over. And I still don’t like the very last thread that’s kind of going down the middle, but I didn’t really notice it until it was too late. And then I tied it off again on another nail, added a loop of thread to the top for hanging, and done!

A word of warning: one of the nails popped out while I was winding the string. I managed to get it back in, and it seems okay for now, but if I had it to do over again I’d use thicker plywood (this was only 1/4 inch) so I could get the nails in a little better. I was worried thicker plywood would make it too heavy, but it’s really lightweight as is, so I think it’d be fine.

 

And now I’m off to do Christmas stuff! I have all the usual end of year wrap up kind of posts planned for between Christmas and New Year’s, and I’m hoping we’ll get a lot of work done on the big master bath makeover while Dave is off work (I actually have some bathroom stuff I’ve been needing to post for forever, so that at least is coming up soon).

Maybe you would like to pin this?

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