2017 was a rough year. 2016 wasn’t all that better. I am determined to make 2018 a good year. My resolution for this year was to be better. Be a better me, Be better to the people in my life. Eat better. Do better at trying to be healthy. I want to spend 2018 getting ready for the rest of my life – get my MBA, get into a good habit with making healthy food, organize the house and learn new things. With that, specifically with the last part, I have signed up for a number of classes to try new things (remember when I tried calligraphy last year and now I use it all the time) – the first was the {Creative Pallet} class with 2nd Chance Restoration, and tonight was #2, a DIY String Art Class with Crafty Creations held at one of my favorite local stores, The Mason Jar.

I need to mention that I’m super glad that I follow @themasonjarmonroe on Instagram since they sent out their email for the class registration, and then they quickly posted on social media that the class was almost sold out, so I hit their website up to register (which was pretty easy). After registration was complete, we were asked to fill out a Google Doc to decide what we wanted to make based on the choices available – we picked a brown or grey board, a letter or the state of Connecticut, and then what word we wanted below the string art. I picked a brown board to make Connecticut with the name Connecticut underneath. Courtney (the owner of The Mason Jar) opened up the shop a little early tonight to allow us to shop, which of course I did! While we were shopping/browsing the store, Josey from Crafty Creations CT was setting up and boy did she set up quick. Josey and her sister set up each spot with a hammer, nails, scissors, tape, marker, pliers and tweezers. Once we all sat down, Josey gave each of us our board (which she already cut, sanded and stained for us), print outs of the shapes we would be making and a vinyl sticker for the word on the sign we were making.

Once everyone was there and we had our materials, we began by placing our letter or state on the board. I decided to put the state of CT above the name Connecticut on the board, so I positioned my cutout of Connecticut where I wanted it and I secured it in place with a couple pieces of scotch tape. Then starting by nailing our 1″ nails into the corners of the state, each nail went into the board about 1/4″, we needed to be sure that we didn’t go through the back of the board and that each nail was in far enough so that adding the string wouldn’t make them fall out (if the nail wasn’t straight, that was OK because we could use the pliers to straighten them out). Then we continued to add nails around the rest of the border, about 1/2″ apart from each other. After the border was done, we untaped the paper and then pulled the paper off the board – if there were any pieces of the paper stuck around the bottom of the nail, we used a tweezer to remove it. Then we added a heart inside the state, approximately where Monroe is located – we followed all the same steps, tape it down, add nails, then pull the paper off.

After we had all the nails on the board and the paper was removed, we picked a color string to use. Since Tom and I have the same favorite color, I picked green. Starting in a corner, we took the end of the string and tied a double knot around the nail, leaving a bit of excess hanging off. Then taking the string, we were able to go from nail to nail, looping the string around a nail and going across the board in no particular order. The only rules about the string were to make sure you stayed inside the shape (sounds obvious, but you needed to be sure that anything like that little notch at the top of the state stayed a notch) and with the heart, we didn’t go inside it since we would do that in a different color. Once we were content with the string coverage inside the shape, you made your way back to the nail you started with and then went from nail to nail making a border going around each nail in order, then once we got all the way around on the outside, we doubled back making the border outline on the inside of the same nails. When we again reached the first nail we started with, we tied the string to the end that was already hanging off from when we started. Then we put a small dot of super glue on the nail next to the one we started on and pulled the string there, holding it in place until it was secure. Once that was done, we were able to cut off the excess string (but be very careful you only are cutting excess string, not the string on your shape). Then we repeated the same within the heart – I did my heart in white to allow it to stand out against the green.

With the string art portion of the project complete, we applied the vinyl sticker to the bottom of the board. In my case I had picked the name of the state, some people did the zip code and people doing a letter did their name. But it could really be anything, or nothing. The final step was to nail a bracket on the back so that we would be able to hook it on a nail and hang it on the wall. And with that, we were done! Josey was a great teacher and was super helpful through out the whole class – and Court was a fantastic host who supported us all throughout the evening. I highly recommend that if you’re local, you try out a string art class with Josey or stop into The Mason Jar to say hi to Court, check out all her awesome merch and try a class there!