Matt and I have come a long way with our home. If you would have seen it a couple years ago, you would barely even know anyone lived there. Our living room was especially barren - no couches, no TV, just a stereo, a table, and our fish tank. It didn't matter to us as much when we were younger and weren't really spending much time at home. But, now that we're older and are busy, busy, busy all the time we really wanted to come home to a nice place and be able to relax. So, being the geeks that we are, we furnished our living room, complete with a 3D Smart TV, 3D Blu-Ray Player, and an Xbox. Now, we have a space to come home and just relax (and by relax I mean play video games). Over the past couple of years, I've been working on decorating our then-bare walls and shelves.
Now, to the point of all this. I had spent so much time focusing on the "public" spaces of our home (Living room, kitchen, bathroom, etc.) that I had completely neglected our bedroom. Currently due to lack of space, our bedroom also serves as our "office" area. Both of our computers and desks reside in our bedroom. Since "upgrading" our living room, we have not been spending our time in our room at our desks surfing the web or playing games as we had in the past, which resulted in all the other rooms in the apartment being beautifully decorated, but the bedroom remaining to be boring and blah.
DIY Yarn Wall Art
What you'll need:
- Nails (do not underestimate the amount of nails you will need - I bought twice as much as I thought I would need and used all of them).
- A hammer
- Lots of yarn in various colors (you will need a lot of yarn, depending on what image you're creating).
- Either a printer or projector to put the image on the wall
- Painter's tape (if using a paper printed image - or any other "less sticky" tape that won't pull the paint off your walls if you need to readjust).
I began by choosing the phrase "Sweet Dreams" for our bedroom wall (appropriate, right?) and also choosing the font that I liked best (I picked Impact to make the letters stand out boldly). I printed the letters out with one letter per page in order to get them to be the size that I wanted.
Next, along with the help of my wonderfully handy husband, I measured out the spot I wanted the image to appear. He helped me a TON with this part of the project. Here are some tips on getting the image to be centered:
- Take lots of measurements - measure the total length of the wall as well as the total length of the image will be placing on it.
- Have a calculator handy - Calculate the length of half the wall. Measure from one corner and make a mark at the length you calculated. Do the same from the other corner. The marks may not match up exactly, and that's okay. The center of the two marks is the true center of the wall. Do the same to find the center of the image.
- Match up the center points of the wall and image - This was not as easy for my project because the center of my image fell somewhere in the spacing between the two words. Make sure you have reference points to work from (for example, 10 inches from the center should match up with a certain letter/point on the image).
- Tape is your friend - If you've printed the image onto paper, use painter's tape to tack the paper to the wall. Painter's tape is easy to remove and re-stick where you need it.
- Use a level - If you want your image to be properly leveled, you will need a level. There are apps that are available on both iOS and Android that can do this for you. The one I used is called iHandy Level Free (you guessed it - it's free!).
- Have someone else eyeballing it - instead of running back and forth from the chair I was standing on to the other side of the room to take a look at the whole image, I had Matt stand on the other side of the room and help me in making sure it looked just right.
After getting the image set up where you'd like it, begin placing the nails. My best tip this step are to put one nail at each point where the image's outline curves or takes a turn (corners for example).
As I said before, and as you can now see from my photo, you will use tons of nails, especially on "curvier" letters/images (like the "s" above). For a finished product that is closer to the original image and less blocky or angular, you will want to place several nails closer together in order to direct the yarn. We're working with straight lines here, people. Just use your judgement - you don't want them too close together either or you'll lose the look of the yarn to the nail-heads. Make sure you have plenty of nail sticking out of the wall as well. I recommend about an inch of room, especially if you want your image to appear "fuller," as you'll need to wrap yarn around the nail several times.
After setting the nails in your desired pattern, take down the paper used as the template. Make sure to get any little scraps left behind and clean up any pencil markings you made on the wall when placing the template. Once the template is gone, it's much harder to visualize the image that you're trying to create. This is one reason it would be easier with a projector as you could keep the image on the wall as you string the yarn. Unfortunately, I don't have a projector so I had to go the old fashioned route!
Once the wall is cleaned up, the fun begins! Tie the end of the yarn to one of the nails and begin twisting and wrapping the yarn around the nails. It's very important to remember the outlines of the image while doing this step so that your yarn doesn't cross outside of the image to reach another nail. To match the decor of our bedroom, I knew that I wanted my letters to have a fuller ivory area on the inside with a black outline and some lighter crossings of black on top of the ivory. I started by criss-crossing ivory yarn all over the inside of each letter, filling in the image. Once I was satisfied, I cut the yarn with a good amount of room on the end to work with and tied the end around a nail, similarly to what I did to start the design. Next, I started a black yarn and strung the yarn around the edges of the letter to give it an outline and then did a few crosses with the black on the inside of the letter. I cut and tied off the end just as I did with the ivory.
Rinse and repeat on each letter or until your image is to your satisfaction. Be creative! Use multiple colors, designs, or textures! I'd love to see what you come up with! I'm hoping to continue my bedroom makeover by doing a few more DIY projects. I want to do a rearrangement of the furniture and make a big upholstered headboard to go beneath the yarn art! Also would like to paint the dresser that you can see peeking up from the right corner of the above photo. I'll be sure to post more on my bedroom makeover adventure as it unfolds!
xo,
C
