California String Art

I had an extra piece of 2′ X 4′ plywood. I also had some left over blue wood stain from years ago. I also had a bunch of free time, so I bought some nails and string for about $5. I’m originally from California, so I figured that would be a great topic for this.

First, I found an outline of California. I printed it out on 6 sheets of paper. I taped them together.

Next, I stained the wood. It took three coats and two coats of clear coat. The next day, I set the paper on the wood and made sure the layout was the way I wanted. I decided to place the state on an angle, so that it was more centered on the board.

I started in one corner, and hammered in a small 1 inch nail so that it stuck out about 3/4 an inch. Then I did the same thing to the other end. This would hold the sheet in place. I slowly hammered in the rest of the nails every 1/4 inch or so.

The next part was actually a lot harder than I had planned. All you have to do is remove the paper, without pulling out the nails. I found that it was a royal pain in the ass to do. Eventually I was done with this step.

The final step is to simply string it. I tied a knot to one nail, ran the string to a random nail, wrapped it around the nail, then ran the string to another random nail. I repeated this until each nail had some string tied to it. In many cases I had to wrap around a nail twice to get the angles correct. Once that was done, I just tied a not around the last nail.