As spring breathes new life into everything around us, we decided to follow suit and breathe new life into the seriously seventies craft that is String Art.
Adorning the walls of many a home some thirty plus years ago, String Art was cheap, popular and very groovy. We figured a revival was in order and with a few slight tweaks, the result is a seriously un-seventies, but still groovy piece of do-it-yourself art.

String Art is the craft of winding a continuous length of string taut between calculated points to create a dimensional design. The artist hammers small nails into a lightweight MDF board at specific points using a placement chart and then winds the string or yarn firmly between each nail according to the pattern. A clever design makes perfect shapes and curves from the angles created when the string crosses over itself. First introduced as a way of illustrating complex mathematics concepts, the serious side of String Art eventually gave way to creative interpretation. Refer to any seventies publication on family craft and String Art will be one of the many projects on offer. You’ll find a vast assortment of designs worthy of any decor involving a lava lamp.

We transformed one of these original designs to suit a more modern interior simply by changing three small things.

First, say goodbye to velvet. Rather than cover our MDF board in velvet as the project specified, we spray-painted it a warm white. Goodbye, seventies kitsch. Hello, instant modernity.

Second, conceal the nails. Definitely not an asset to the finished piece left as they are, we hammered ours in and then sprayed them white along with the MDF board.

Third, remember that one colour works wonders. Most original designs suggest various colour combinations, but by using string in just one colour the strong graphic element of our heart design jumped out from the white background.

To try your hand at what we consider to be the perfect spring project you will need 12mm MDF cut to size, nails, a hammer, white spray paint, a ball of coloured string (we recommend crochet yarn) and finally, and our design placement chart. You can download ours here for a bargain $5! Beware of cheap or free imitations. Ours has undergone hours of testing and is guaranteed to make your walls look shelter-mag-worthy.