Missouri Love

Welcome to my new blog!  This is where I will be posting crafty things that I have made and want to share with people.  Sometimes pictures just aren't enough and I'm sure you will enjoy my mishaps along the way. 

First up!  Missouri Love!

Here's how you do it: 

1.  Marry a handy husband. 
2.  Buy a piece of wood from Hobby Lobby.  I went with the one with finished edges just to make life a little easier.  I think I paid around $4 with a 40% off coupon.  (if you don't have their app - get it!!)
3.  Ask previously mentioned husband very nicely to spray paint the piece of wood.  I fail at spray painting, so he is the obvious option.  I didn't want to paint it with a brush and end up having brushstrokes, I really wanted a nice clean finish. 
4.  Wait for paint to dry....seriously.  Don't do it when its wet. 
5.  Print out a map of your state.  It may take some adjusting in Word and multiple trials to get it to the right size, but you'll get there. 
6.  Cut out and center the state on the wood.  Tape it down. 

7.  To please the handy husband...I marked out every 1/4" for the nails.  Its gets kind of hard around the curves, but just estimate the best you can. Make your marks small so they won't be visible when you take the paper off. 
8.  Start nailing.  I used the small nails that are used to hang pictures on the wall.  The package was about $2 at Hobby Lobby with another 40% coupon. 

9.  Locate the county in which your reside and put a nail where the a side of the heart will be. Take out the nail.  (its just a marker)
10.  Remove the paper template.  
11.  Use your pre-marked spot for your heart and add in the other nails.  You should get something that looks like this.

12.  Take your string (shown in the top of the previous picture) and make a loop at the end like this (please excuse the terrible manicure....suprisingly my nails now look worse!):

13.  Hook your loop onto your starting nail, I started in the bottom corner.  Then hook it around a nail of the heart and back down, then back up, then back down, then back up...you get the idea.  I counted my nails out - because i'm OCD like that - and I figured I had to about 8 outside nails per inside heart nail.  

14.  Keep going....there are a lot of nails to go.  Once you get round one done...it looked like this: 

15.  I didn't like that the strings were at an angle for each set of 8 per heart nail...so i decided to go over all the nails again and do a double layer of string. I didn't stick to my 8 string rule this time...I just filled in where I thought it needed it the most.  I ended up with the finished product.  

16. Post pictures on facebook and make a blog about it to make you feel like your time was well spent :) 
17.  Hang it on a wall to show off your creativity - or ability to copy others ideas - thank you pinterest!