enJOY it

Do you remember that I am having a love affair with staining? Of course you do!

I have been dreaming of a project like this since before Christmas. I really wanted to hammer nails into small wooden pieces and wrap string in the shape of a star for decorations. But then one thing led to another and I was still scared of the hardware store at the time and so nothing got done.

But NOW, my project is back and better than ever. When we had the light pine wood cut down for the coffee table, there was a leftover square. I immediately started contemplating the most interesting shape to string on it.

At first I considered a "C" because that is our last initial. But that didn't feel right. And a heart felt too obvious. And a star felt too holiday. So finally, I landed on an ampersand. To me, an ampersand means LOVE. So that made it perfect. (I just realized, I should have told Paul this was his anniversary gift.)

To get the shape, I took a big piece of paper (actually one of my old calendar pages. This calendar has been the best investment of my life) and free hand drew an ampersand. Then I used a ruler to get the width of the ampersand equal in every space. Does that make sense? Basically, I moved the ruler around each point until the edges of the symbol were three inches apart everywhere. Then I cut it out, taped it to the newly stained board and hammered nails around the edges of the paper.

The last step was to wrap string around from nail to nail. At first, I wanted to create some sort of organized pattern, but that didn't really work. So instead I just wove the string back and forth wherever it seemed to look right. I used just one piece of string and then tied the ends together when it was all done.

I'm in love with it. It's big (almost 2'x2') and probably too heavy to hang on a wall. But leaning, it's killer. And it's fancying up our new living room that I can't wait to share with you.

This is project 5 of 26.

I am attempting to tackle 26 personal craft projects before I turn 27 on 02.22.12. You can follow my progress here on the blog, on pinterest or on flickr.

See project 1, 2, 3 & 4