Art Projects: String Art
16 September 2016
This next project I want to showcase will have us caught up on Art for now, though the girls are working on another one that I'm hoping they'll finish by the weekend. If you're anything like my girls, you spend a lot of time YouTube-ing (which I do not) cool and interesting videos. I did not know that String Art was such a thing right now, but they were so excited when they learned that we were going to be doing this.
While we weren't going to get anywhere near as technically involved as this beautiful Red Rose, I was surprised to find that there would be a few challenges ahead as this project rolled out.
I pulled our instructions directly from this tutorial over at honey & fitz, though we changed up a couple things per her suggestions. The first was that I bought two packs of cork tiles to save a little money over the bigger rolls of cork, since I would only need three per kid (they came in packs of four tiles) to get to the right thickness. Jack opted out of this project.
I figured we'd need two, three coats max per kid of white paint, forgetting entirely how porous cork is. I had given them the choice of paint or natural cork, and what color paint, but both chose to do white backgrounds just like the tutorial showed. Fine, but they needed four layers of paint each and still weren't happy with the final look before I urged them to just continue on with the project.
Lefty Sophia just has to do everything backward, y'all!
Finally, that last coat was on and dry. Beyond tacky, actually dry. My girls did not want to wait that long, but I would not let them continue until no paint came off to the touch. My word, the impatience here!
Instead of a word or a picture, the girls each opted to do their first initial. I let them pick out the font, size and all, and had them cut out the letter after I printed it out. Then they used linoleum nails to tack the initial in place.
The linoleum nails went in easily. The girls didn't even need their dad's rubber mallet after a while, I don't think.
Chloë's finished nails, ready for removal of the "C" template.
She declared the paper removal to be a "satisfying" task.
Sophia chose a much different font than her older sister's, and I was hoping she would separate the parts of the "S" the way her font did, but I didn't push. She didn't want to.
Chloë was ready to start stringing. I told the girls to just relax and enjoy the process, stringing up, down, back, forth, however the string "told" them to go. And so she did.
Sophia was still tacking away...
... but at last, she finished. Sophie found the "satisfying" part to be patting all her nails after the "S" template was removed. Also, is it just me, or does my 11-year-old still have cute little baby hands?
I also told the girls that if they just didn't like how something looked, to unstring it and redo that section. Or the whole thing. No pressure, no hurry, just go with the flow. And so they did. Several times.
Sophia planned this to be her color palette, but she grew very frustrated with this project. It turned out not to be, shall we say, her medium for arting. She just found a lot of difficulty with this one. So she strung, unstrung, restrung, unstrung, continue ad nauseum.
Chloë chose a rainbow color palette - my girls like their rainbows, like their mama - and mostly stuck to her plans.
Chloë's final work, pre-frame.
Sophia, who had given up on this project for several days, was finally pushed to finish. She turned in her work with a note that read, "I tried" and a sad face. I'm sorry she did not like the project as much as I'd hoped, but I guess you can't win 'em all! She does want hers framed, though, so that's good!
We finally found a frame that was perfect for Chloë's "C" at Michael's tonight. That was before Sophia told me she wanted one, too, so I still need to get hers.
Like the honey & fitz post suggested, I bought the Velcro Command Strips for the kids' String Art, but we might save those for another use and just put up nails for the frames. Don't know yet. I do love the Command Strips, though...!
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Thanks for stopping by!
Fin.