Woot: State Outline String Art

Pinterest links back to this Etsy store.

I saw this back before Christmas and just thought it was gorgeous. I feel like I'm fairly proficient at crafting, so I decided I might as well try. Clearly I did not take into consideration that there isn't a single straight line in the state of West Virginia (possibly slightly exaggerating). All of the projects I had found like this used a board and real nails. And not saying that I'm lazy, but I knew I could find a way to make this easier. So I found a cork board and these little pins:
I liked these because they weren't as noticeable as nails, but still stood up well in the cork. I had to put several coats of paint on the cork for it to soak in enough to have a solid, uniform, not-faded-looking color. I'm sure with the wood I could have used a coat of primer and any coat of paint and just been done with it, but I liked the dark paint with the light string/gold pins. I used tissue paper to trace the state outline off of my computer screen (which I don't recommend doing, I'm sure there are much much safer ways to go about this. and then started placing in the pins on the board thru the tissue: With so many zig-zags, I really had to use a lot of pins here, but I'm sure if you lived in a more normally shaped state, you wouldn't need quite as many. As it turns out I think I used only a little over half of the package of pins. The great thing about using tissue paper for this part is that I could rip it up without messing up any of the pins, and there was no writing on the cork which sometimes just makes crafts look half-finished. But I digress. I think that with just the pins the board looks pretty nifty and it gave me an idea to try it again sometime with those stick pins that have the larger, multicolored heads on them. But this is what it looks like when all the pins are in and you've picked the location for the heart (I should note that in the pics I was making two simultaneously and so the hearts are in two different places.) The stringing part is not hard, it is just painfully monotonous. You need to count the pins for the outline and then the count the number for the heart so you can divide (yes, sorry, there is math involved here) to see how many times you need to loop on the heart pins. I used embroidery floss for this. The easiest way I found to start was pick a spot on the outline that would have several strings coming near it (for me it was up in the northern pan handle), that way the tail would be hidden, and tie the string off on one of the pins. it's probably easier to just pop the pin out of the board, tie it, and put it back, but i didn't think about that until just now. And then you just loop back and forth to the heart, making sure you loop the correct number on the heart pins (I think for this one, it was eight or so loops onto the pin) and then back out to each outline pin. If you have an easy state, you probably wouldn't need tweezers to do this, but I did use them and it helped. When you get to the last one I looped the string a couple times on the inner pin, tied it off very carefully, and then coated all of the heart string inside with clear glue. I probably didn't need to do this, but I figure better safe than sorry right? So here is the final product:

Difficulty Rating: It's easy, just tedious.

Project Cost: I had the cork board and paint all ready, but I don't think I spent more than $5 total on those. The pins were on sale 2/$1.00 and the floss is only a couple dollars too, depending on what type you buy.

Verdict: I really like how this turned out. It looks so much harder than it is. Definitely a Woot!