DIY Retro String Art Wall Decor

How to Make Your Own 

Retro String Art Wall Décor

By Kelly Rae Smith 

String art may be an art form popularized in the 1960s, but it’s not a lost one! 

Etsy’s ripe with sellers hawking their stringed wares, but you don’t have to break the bank to get your hands on some cool stringed art of your very own. 

Using a few inexpensive materials, you can easily create your very own nifty piece of string art. 

And I’m here to show you how.

What You’ll Need

·         Wooden board

·         Nails

·         Thread

·         Spray paint

·         Newspaper

How To Do It

     While you can have a hardware store chop up a few hardwood boards to start, you can also pick up an already-presentable plaque at your local craft store, like I did. 

 Gather your other materials. For this small plaque, I used 1 ¼ nails. Using the skinny nails allows you to place them closer together without much awkwardness. Make sure that there’s somewhat of a head (I used wire brads) to help you keep the string in place more effectively.

  Decide which shape you’d like to string up and make a template out of paper. 

    I chose to do a heart for this project, so I simply folded a sheet of paper and cut my shape out, ensuring it was a good size for the plaque. I then held the heart in place as I penciled in dots around the heart signifying where the nails would go. 

Next, carefully begin hammering nails in, using the dots as a guide. Make sure the plaque is on an older, thick surface just in case the nail accidentally sinks all the way through. Hammer until each nail is securely in place while also leaving plenty of the nail protruding out, ready to get stringed. But don’t get too carried away — one out-of-place nail could mean having to start all over again. 

  Now, grab some newspaper and spray paint. I’ve read about the advantage of buying colored nails for extra flair, but this is a DIY project, so I decided to spray-paint the plaque and paint my own nails all in one fell swoop. Red was an obvious choice for a heart!

     Now the fun begins. Choose your string — I used yellow thread from a sewing kit. Loop the string around your first nail and tie it in a knot, a couple of times for good measure. 

     Go nuts. Rules go out the window here — simply string any and all nails in whatever pattern you please! 

That was fun, right? I only stopped because I ran out of string. But remember, you can also use multiple colors if you’d like. 

  I used Velcro hanging strips to hang my plaque inside a drawer shelf in my kitchen from a previous DIY project. I think it’s the perfect placement for my latest project, don’t you? 

Kelly Rae Smith is a craftswoman and home décor expert who writes for Shutterfly.com. To see more wall art ideas like Kelly’s retro string art project, visit Shutterfly online.