Need a thoughtful, homemade gift or art piece? We miss my little sister, brother-in-law and new nephew terribly, who now live in Texas. But to be honest,  they probably are homesick for their home state of Montana. They met in Missoula Montana for college and law school and we wanted to craft a little art piece that will make them smile. We would’ve liked to send them a Montana version of our California Marquee, but it would be way too hard to ship. Instead here is an easy, diy, Montana State Thread Art piece…

Notice the heart is where Missoula is located? It looks difficult and time consuming but it surprisingly wasn’t. Instead it only took a little patience and a few evenings of college football games (It was a two-fer…I threaded Montana and at the same time earned some major “wife points” watching those games with the hubby) I consider this craft my version of embroidery or knitting (since I can’t do either one)…And it looks industrial, made of wood, nails, and made from stuff around the house, which our readers know this is more my style! Here is the how to for another state inspired art piece…

Materials/Tools

Hammer (Possibly needle nose pliers as well)

A printed stencil of the state you want to create on paper (we found ours on the internet for free and just printed it out)

A piece of thin wood (we had some scrap pieces that were perfectly sized to a shadow box frame)

A shadow box frame (The one we found was from Michaels, and even better with a 50% off holiday coupon)

Picture matting/border (This may not be necessary, but since I was using scrap wood in an odd size we needed it.  I used some blue matting from another picture we had at the house.)

Small picture framing nails

Thread (We used navy blue thread for military uniforms, we had some lying around the house but that’s another story)

First place your state stencil on the piece of wood and hammer the nails along the lines.

To get the nails closely spaced I used a pair of needle nose pliers to stabilize the nails. (And prevent hammering your fingers) Don’t forget to add a little nail heart inside the state in order to string the thread to a central location (Although you don’t have to use a heart) Then once all the nails are in place, gently tear the paper stencil away from the wood. The result looks a little uneven and unfinished at first but once you start to add the thread it comes together.

Threading is very simple, just make a little loop in the thread, and start in the middle working outward. Pull it taught, loop it twice around one outside nail, then back to the middle again. In order to not go crazy I would sometimes give myself a break and tie the thread off in the middle before moving onto the next nail in the heart. Here is a video link and detailed How to for string art: http://www.wikihow.com/Do-String-Art

Finally when done, (And glad you did not throw the project out the window) place it in the shadow box with matting. Now its ready for your wall at home or mail it off to three awesome people in your life (who may be far in distance but never far from your heart). That’s the holiday present round up everyone! Happy Sunday!