About a month or so ago I promised to share some of the DIY projects I tackled for my August wedding. I already shared the simplest of them, a ring pillow I made for the ring warming component of our ceremony. Today I’m going to share another incredibly easy, but more time consuming project- our yarn art.
There are countless tutorials and inspiration photos of string and yarn art all over the internet, but I new I wanted something on a slightly larger scale. Thankfully, that’s what friends are for.
5 Feet is pretty huge, and light weight is definitely not something I would have used to describe this thing. But they grabbed it for me and we spent the weekend slowly turning it into what you see below.
First things first- we cut that sucker in half. Unfortunately all we had was a teeny hand saw, but we powered through, took some turns and it wasn’t so bad. Then we sanded the whole thing and hosed it down.
When we were ready to get started with the art portion of this project, we headed to the computer. We made a template choosing a bold block font and printed it out. The spacing of the letters will be awkward, however, so I recommend you adjust that after printing by cutting between each letter.
Tape the letters down and start nailing around the borders. I reccommend long nails with a large diameter head so that when you pull the yarn tight it has something to catch it and prevent it from slipping off. You can see at the very top of the picture below that I just nailed over the paper. It will rip off easily when you are done, leaving all the nails in place.
testing out the best way to wrap the yarn
After that it was all trial and error. We tested colors, found the way we liked best, and wrapped. We choose to do an outline in a slightly darker shade of yarn so it would stand out more. I’d also bought yellow yarn, but the girls thought it looked like one of those macaroni pictures, so we used white instead. I think poor Sara wrapped that last heart like three times until it matched the other two.
my amazing friends and the best yarn wrappers ever! I helped too, I just stopped to take this picture!
As you can see what ultimately worked best was to “fill” in the letters with a random pattern of the lighter color, and then outline each letter. To tie off your yarn just tie around a nail and tuck the ends underneath. You won’t be able to see them. And that’s it, you’re all done!
So, a final recap.
1. Find wood
2. Prep wood (sand, clean, cut to size)
3. Print template
4. Nail around template
5. Wrap nails in yarn
6. Get married (feel free to skip this last step)
Simple, yes? Here’s one final action shot, just because I can. :)
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