DIY: String Art Wall Decoration

This is a great technique if your looking to make a bold statement, especially in a large space.  I get tons of complements on my living room wall now, and the best part is it was so inexpensive. I think I spent less then six dollars on the whole thing! 

STEP 1: Gather supplies. You will need string, scissors, hammer, nails, measuring tape, masking tape, scrap paper and a writing utensil.

STEP 2: Determine your pattern. For this wall I choose a heart pattern, downloaded from www.stringartfun.com, copyright 2010 DJ Designs.   

STEP 3: Create a template. This particular pattern is a little more complicated because it's a circle (and really who can free hand a circle with every 4.5 degrees marked off? Not I), so I projected the pattern on to the wall at school and made a template. The step with the projector could be easily eliminated if you chose a pattern in a square.  

Because I wanted the circles to be fairly large, about 5.5 ft and 3 ft in diameter, I pieced scrap paper together to make the template, if you do this make sure to make hash marks on all the overlapping pieces so they can be accurately realigned when you move it. 

STEP 4:  NAILS.  I used pretty small nails and chose to put the nails directly into the wall, but I could have just have easily used a board and mounted the board on the wall.  I taped the template up and then hammered the nails straight through the paper. I just ripped the paper away because I wasn't planning on reusing it. 


Side note: I wish I had bought black nails, the reflection on the heads of the nails annoyed me and I had to sharpie all of them. 

STEP 5: NUMBER THE NAILS.  Numbering the nails is very important if you plan on following the pattern. I just used pieces of masking tape. 

STEP 6: COMMENCE STRINGING. Let the fun begin! Tie the start of your string to the first nail and follow your pattern. I recommend looping the string around each nail two or three times before moving on to the next nail. Anything less is prone to slipping off. Also be sure to pull the string tight between each nail to achieve crisp, geometric lines, but not so tight that you are ripping the nails out of the wall.  

Remember to have fun and play with it.  These two circles are both variations on the original pattern, aka I messed up the pattern the first time I tried them, but they are fun and so I thought I would share them. There are a lot of pretty cool things you can do with this, so experiment!

I have recently be dubbed by a friend "the most normal person" he knows. While this title initially confused me, further conversation divulged he was merely expressing appreciation for my maturity, responsibly, and rational perception of the world. He he went on to deduce these traits to be the direct result of growing up in a healthy family, namely, that my parents are still together.

While I've always felt extremely blessed to grow up in a home with both my parents, its struck me as a profound reminder of just how blessed I truly am. I felt the need to thank them for loving each other and sticking it out, no matter what.

 So, I did.

My mother's response?

"Thank you. It has not always been easy but it has always been right. And my 'motherhood' job is the best and most important job in the world."

I love my mom <3

I have a tendency to be a bit obsessive over songs. I hear one I love and then listen to it over and over on repeat for days till I hate it. I do the same with poetry.

My most recent discovery is a poet by the name of Sierra DeMulder. I thoroughly enjoy her. Specifically her poem "Werewolf." 


I'm not sure how to embed a youtube video, but here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ7mEPVfC3M&feature=

enjoy.

QUOTES

I have a "sketchbook" of quotes. The idea stems from an art project I did in high school. 

Let me share a few pages. 

I spent a morning on Etsy. Unlike my sister, whose charming blog can be found here, who always manages to cute and adorable things, I have unearthed a new monster. Let me share....

Monster Mug with Great Big Teeth

I don't have words.

How much Calcium is there in Total? Day 1

This is what I do in Analytical Chemistry:

We want to determine the amount of calcium in TOTAL cereal. We can do this two ways: by precipitating the calcium out or by a redox reaction (titration). Lucky me I get to do it both ways.

The first day is pretty easy, just making solutions to use for the other two days.

First, the cereal is digested in 6 M HCl. The lovely golden flakes turn in to a horrible, stinky brown goo.

 

Next, the goo is filtered to remove the organic chunks. Ideally, all of the calcium is washed out into the filtrate flask and then filtrate can be diluted and analyzed.

 Note: Do not rip the filter paper because then in has to be re-filtered, which takes considerably longer than you might expect.

Two other solutions are prepared. 

One is 1L of 1 M sulfuric acid (M means molar, which is just a unit of concentration), which is made by diluting 6 M acid. Over all its a rather boring and tedious process due to the fact that dumping  this particular acid in water releases a lot of heat, so you have to add the acid in small portions and monitor the temperature.  Its redeeming quality is that the stir bar makes a pretty awesome tornado in the beaker :D 

 The other is a solution of 1.6 g KMnO4 (Potassium Permanganate) in water. It is very lovely shade of purple that has to be hidden away in a ugly brown bottle to prevent decomposing as it will react with light if over exposed.

To be continuted... (I know you're on the edge of your seat)

 

My life is all together very normal. This is my laundromat. I was forced to visit today, despite a rapidly approaching trip home where laundry is joyously free, due to a lack of clean underwear and  a gravy explosion. 

 

How is it that the brightest pairs of underwear always make it to the front to swirl around in full view?