State Nail Art - DIY



 

As you can see, PammiCakes Recipes has gone through a rebranding phase.  Not only will PammiCakes display delicious recipes, but now it will showcase DIY projects completed around my house.  In addition to my passion for cooking and trying new recipes, I love crafting, painting and DIYing around our home to make it represent who my husband and I are.  Luckily, my husband is extremely patient with me, because my DIY ‘to-do’ list tends to grow at a much faster rate than our completed projects. 

The challenge of DIY and craft projects keep me motivated and one of the reasons why I find DIY so much fun!  Sometimes projects can be disasters, but usually with a little creativity a solution to the problem can be fixed to make it all work out.  I hope you all enjoy these DIY additions to the blog.  I am excited to share them with you!

The first DIY project I shared a while back was our ‘new’ kitchen post.  We added a mosaic tile backsplash to our kitchen.  We definitely got a lot of help with this project from Bill’s father, but nonetheless, we had a vision and jumped in with both feet.  We were so pleased with the end result, that there was no turning back with updates and projects I wanted to take on. 

There is a small confession I need to share with you all, I am obsessed with Pinterest!  I could search on there for hours and my creative side just gets all giddy.  There are so many amazing ideas and creative people in this world.  This state nail art idea is, of course, on Pinterest and felt confident in my DIY abilities to recreate this myself.  Ok, let’s get started on how I tackled this beautiful piece of artwork.  Below are all of the items you will need. 
 

Things you need:

Paint
Wood board
100 Grit sandpaper
Small nails
Hammer
Print out of selected state or country
Painters tape
Scissors
Thread
Wall hanging bracket & nails

First, use 100 grit sandpaper over the entire board.  This will help the paint to really ‘stick’ to the piece and helps to remove any rough edges that were left over from when the board was cut.    Once the sanding is finished, wipe the board with a clean cloth to remove any dust.  We found the wood board at Michaels.  They had lots of different shapes and sizes to select from.  Plus it had the nice detailed edge that I was looking for. 
 

Now it is time for the paint.  We used leftover paint from a previous project (more on that in another post).  The paint was paint and primer in one (Behr Ultra Paint, Moon Rise). It only took two light coats of paint to completely cover the board.  Always use light coats, as this helps against drips and keeps the coats nice and smooth.  Allow the paint to dry completely before moving onto the next steps.  I waited about an hour. 

While waiting for the paint to dry, I printed off an enlarged outline of my desired state, Massachusetts.  To do this, I went to GoogleMaps, searched Massachusetts, then took a screen shot of the screen.  I copied the screen shot into a word document, adjusted the size of the picture and paper size.  Easy as that!  I am sure someone will have an easier way to do it, but this worked for me.  Next, cut out your state outline. 

Once the board is dry, I attached a wall hanging bracket to the back.  You can purchase these kits with the little brackets and nails at any hardware or craft store.  Make sure you do this part now while you can lay the board down flat.  It will be much more difficult to nail it in with the nails on the front.

Next, use painters tape to attach the state outline to the board.  I made rolls of tape and placed them between the board and the paper so that I had a visual of the entire outline of the state.  Now comes the fun part, nailing in all of the nails!  This will take time, but I strangely found this therapeutic.  I got into a rhythm and the next thing I knew, it was done.  Nail only about 1/3 of the nails into the board.  Make sure they secure, but also have enough height coming out of the board to loop the thread around.  I started in a corner and just went around the entire outline.  Don’t worry about nailing into the paper.  Once you have placed your nails around the entire outline, lift out the paper. 
 

Now we are in the home stretch.  The board looked pretty awesome with just the white background and the shiny gold nails.  I debated to leave it as is, but I moved onto my next step of adding the navy blue thread to connect it all together.  This was so much fun swinging the thread to all the different parts of the board.  I started in a corner, knotting the thread and went around the edge of the entire state, just to get it started.  Then I went crazy going all around the state in an overlapping fashion.  There was no rhyme or reason to the pattern.  Once I was happy with the thickness of the thread on the board, I decided to stop.  I honestly couldn’t tell you how much thread I used, but it was a lot!  Tie a knot around one of the nail heads once you are finished. 

I love how this came out.  We were born and raised in Massachusetts and it will be fun to display this in our home.  I apologize for not taking any photos of each stage of the project.  I completely forgot!  Hopefully it all makes sense.