Ada's Room: Project 2: String Elephant

After llama-ing it up, my next animal of choice was the elephant.  I've seen a lot of string art floating around the internet lately, and thought an elephant would be fun to do.

The String Elephant

Things You'll Need/Total Cost:
Cardstock - $0
Wood - $7.50, I purchased 1/2" x 2' x 4' birch wood which is enough for the two projects, so I split the cost.
Sandpaper - $0
Stain - $7.80
Paint Brush and Clean Towel (for stain) - $0
11/16" Nails (2 packs) - $2.60
Embroidery Floss - $4
Total Cost: $21.90

Step 1:  Draw/cut a stencil. Finding an elephant silhouette was very easy.  I drew my elephant on extra cardstock I had in the house and cut it out for a sturdy stencil.

Step 2: Cut the wood to the size you need and sand the side and edges that will be stained.  My board was 24" x 17.5", which allowed for roughly 1-2" around my elephant on all sides.

Step 3: Stain or paint the wood.  I selected red mahogany stain because I wanted a darker color that would come close to matching the pig.  You can also add a polyurethane layer to make it shiny, but I preferred how the wood looked with just the stain.

Step 4:  This step is probably not necessary depending on how you want to do your elephant.  With a pencil, I traced my stencil onto the stained wood.  I originally planned to paint the inside of my elephant a dark color to really contrast the bright string but my stain ended up being dark enough.  I didn't change my mind about the painting until I had already drawn the elephant, which added a few steps for me.  If you aren't planning to paint, I don't recommend tracing your stencil.  Instead, mark on the stencil where you want your nails to go and use this guideline when you start nailing.  You could either nail around your stencil or mark the wood where the holes should go.

Step 5: If you traced your stencil onto the board, mark and/or tap where you want your nails (I spaced mine roughly 3/4" apart).  Then, go back and erase the pencil marks on the wood.  Be sure to erase with the grain to avoid messing up the look of the stain or paint.  Once all pencil marks are gone, add the nails to make the outline of your elephant.

A few tips for this portion:

• You could skip marking where you want the nails, but I wanted mine to be as uniformly spaced as possible.  
• Birch is a hard wood.  Consider purchasing something softer.  I had 156 nails and my hand (and thumb) was pretty sore by the end of it.  Watching Argentina lose probably didn't help...
• I'm not one to talk, but don't get too frustrated if your nails don't go in perfectly straight.  I took longer than I probably should have to do the outline because I was so obsessed with wanting it to be perfect.  You won't notice a few angled nails once the string is on there.
• Pay attention to the nails you are using.  I tried to toss any nails where the head of the nail wasn't completely flat (some of them had snagged edges), but when I added the string it was obvious that I missed some.  The string got caught on rough edges and would start to fray when I wasn't careful.
• If there is a fly that keeps landing on your foot during this process, don't use the hammer to kill it.  You will hurt yourself.  Just ask Micah to kung foo it out of the room for you.

Step 6: Add the string.  The greatest part about this step is you can experiment and just undo it if you don't like it.  I chose to make mine different colors and found that overlapping the previous color with the next made for the smoothest transition.

This project was easy and turned out well enough that there is a strong chance that I will do another one like it.  I will probably make the next project smaller so it requires fewer nails, though.