State Love

Some of you might know that I’m not from the Sunshine State. Wait, the Golden State? The Gold Rush State? I can’t remember. I’ll just say California. I’m not from California. I’m from the EMPIRE State. Good ‘ole NY of S (like US of A - get it)! More specifically, Buffalo. Please don’t ask me if I’m a big Bills fan. People ALWAYS ask me that. And then they giggle and talk about how funny it was how they lost all those superbowls in a row. Good grief. Whatever. What about our snow fall records? No one beats us there! So suck it!

Anyway, when I saw this I knew what I had to do. I had to make one depicting my home state. So…TO THE CRAFT ROOM! Awww. That makes me sad since ”The Craft Room” is my dining room table. Some day…

This time, I took some progress pictures to help you make your own. It was pretty easy and didn’t cost much. Of course, I had a scrap of wood sitting around and some fabric, but neither of those would cost much. The only other things I needed were nails and crochet yarn. Is it yarn or string? I have no idea. It looks like string.

SO…

One of my awesome readers asked what the kind of nails and string I used, so I thought it would be better if I just made a little list of your needed supplies:

Piece of wood
Paint/fabric & glue
Nails - I used 1 1/4″ 3d bright nails (my husband just informed me that the additional info relates to the type and finish of the nail)
Crochet yarn/thread stuff - size (gauge?) 10.

NOW:

Step 1: Cover your piece of wood. First off, if you have a nicer piece of wood, you could just paint it. My piece was a scrap from some old Ikea shelves we had to cut down, so it was MDF and had raw edges. It was easier to just cover it with fabric. Of course, I just used Mod Podge to adhere it. I suggest gluing the fabric on the back instead of spreading glue on the front because there were some spots where it soaked through and it looks a littly poopy. Not totally poopy, but a little.

Step 2: Find a map of your state, print it out and tape it to the fabric. I did the old “roll the tape into a little tube and stick it on the underside of corners” trick. It worked like a charm. I also drew a good-sized heart and taped that where Buffalo is.

Step 3: Start nailing along the state border. I just kinda eyeballed how far apart each nail should be. I thought it looked the best when the nail heads were actually touching or very close to to that. I’m going to add this little piece of advice as Ryan found a quicker way. I think he thought I looked sad or spazzy or something. First, he went and bought me what I’d like to call “Baby’s First Hammer.” It was very small. Not quite a toy, but small. He said the “normal” hammer was a little too big for my little (read: adorably delicate) hands. Apparently, though, even that was pathetic to watch because he then hauled out the drill and showed me how to drill the holes first (with a slight smaller drill bit) and then put the nails in. It was easy peasy.

Step 4: Remove the paper guide you used. This is where I was kinda happy I had done the drilling first. Not that it was super hard to remove in between the nails, but it just saved some time.

Step 5: Insert all the nails. Obviously, this step is only if you drilled the holes instead of just hammered in the nails.

Step 6: Start winding the string! Since New York is not a square state and Buffalo is on a border, I had to finagle a little bit to get all the string to go in the same direction. That meant that I completely skipped winding the string on some nails. Once you get going, though, this part was pretty easy.

Step 7: This is also optional. Again, since the heart wasn’t in the center, Ryan thought it didn’t really stand out. So, when I wasn’t looking, he got out a red Sharpie and colored the nail heads there. Apparently he thought I might be mad because he said something along of the lines of “I did something that you might not like. But I can totally fix it if you don’t.” I think he’s afraid of me sometimes. Anyway, it actually does look a lot better (see first picture above), but it also made me regret using green fabric. He said that if it really bugs me, he doesn’t think it would be too hard to take the nails out, put another piece of fabric on and re-insert the nails. Especially the ones where I drilled the holes instead of just nailing them.

Step 8: Stand back and look at the awesomeness.

As a side note, Ryan had serious reservations about me doing this. Get this. His reason: he thinks that we should “rep the West” instead of New York. Insert eye roll here. What are we Tupac and Biggy? Redonk.