A new Craft

Good afternoon its a gorgeous sunny day here - still cold but hey it is still January!

 As a Christmas gift my lovely friend paid for us to attend a string art class and yesterday was the day we got to take part.

When we arrived we had to choose which pattern we wanted to do. As it was an opportunity to learn the craft we both chose the harder pattern - Michigan State including both the lower and upper peninsulas 

We then set to work hammering tiny nails around the pattern 

Imagine around 25 people all hammering at once - it was very noisy and as you can see from the wrappers it required a small intake of chocolate to complete this stage!

Once all the nails were knocked in we were left with this:

Carefully we tore the pattern away being careful not to dislodge any of the nails 

Then the fun began, we had to wind string around the nails filling in the State. Seems easy but when you have to keep the thread tight and decide where to string across without letting go it can be a bit frustrating especially when the need to blow your nose becomes stronger and stronger!

In these photographs I had completed my center stringing and was adding the red floss to edge it. 

Once this was completed superglue was added to all the knots before snipping off the long ends

This is the completed work - we still have to stencil some wording in the left corner but not being great at free hand lettering we saved this for another day.

We had a fun afternoon with lots of laughs and best of all it was child free!!

We ended the day with dinner out at our favorite nacho place and researched Pinterest for more patterns for our next attempt so watch this space for more string art!

Thank you Jane for such a thoughtful Christmas gift!!