Shiplap
Christmas Wall Decor: Reindeer String Art Tutorial
Hope everyone is recovering nicely from their big ole’ Thanksgiving meal! We had a great time visiting with friends and family in our hometown.
I have a little confession to make. Since I knew that we would be going out of town for Thanksgiving, I wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be so overwhelmed with getting all the decorations out and putting up the tree and doing the outdoor lights and …….. well, you get the idea.
So! I decided to start decorating a week or so in advance. Before you go, “girl is crazy!”……
Don’t worry! I only started messing around with the inside. 😉
Since this was a new house and I wasn’t sure where I wanted everything, I wanted to take my time and figure it out. Also, don’t forget the most important part of me being able to change up the theme this year. Only took me 5 years to convince the hubster, but still, finally got my way this year.
I really wanted some wall art for the house, but I couldn’t find what I really wanted and I knew that it was also going to cost me a bit because I had so much room to fill over the breakfast nook. Remember how big Penelope and Bessie are?
They are 36 x 36 and I love how they fill the space without making the wall look too cluttered with pictures.
I am going with more of a Rustic Theme this year and I have really been drawn to reindeers for some reason. I started looking everywhere, but I just couldn’t find what I really wanted.
So, I knew I was going to have to make it. LORD, HELP ME!
First things first.
I sort of had in my head what I wanted the background to look like. I wanted it to look rustic and I thought I was going to have to stain the wood to look that way, but the hubster and I happened to go by Home Depot and found these boards already made to have the appearance of EXACTLY what I was going to do to the unfinished wood I planned on using.
The boards were originally 1 x 6 x 8 ft. so we had to cut them down to the size I wanted. Since the pictures I was replacing were 36×36, I wanted the Christmas ones to be as close as possible to them. In the end, I ended up getting 3 projects out of all the boards we purchased. P.S. Look for a video tutorial to follow on the second String Art project we did to go with this one.
We purchased 7 of the Shiplap Boards, total. Then, we cut the pieces down to 33.75 in. each. Now lets do some math: we took each board, cut it down and got 2 boards in 33.75in. length with scrap left over of 27.5in. So, in the end, I am getting wall projects for the breakfast nook and 1 project for the outside because I just can’ t let that “scrap” go to waste.
The boards are tongue and groove so when we assembled them next to each other, they fit nicely and tight.
Might I add that the back of the wood has a pretty interesting finish to it? It almost looks like water droplets coming down, so if you were looking to be more artistic with it, that is something to think about. Using the back instead of the front.
We also purchased (2) 1 x 3 x 8ft. pieces of plain white wood for the back supports seen here.
After placing all the boards side by side and into the tongue and groove area, we placed the white boards, which we cut down to 32 in. each to fit the space and laid them across the shiplap boards. Each 8ft space gave us 3 boards, with no left over scrap. This means that when I go to make my third piece, I will have to buy another 8ft. piece of wood. No worries though, because each 8ft. piece was only $ 1.48 !!!! That’s right! Cheap, y’all!
One more thing I wanted to mention before moving forward is this. Each piece of the shiplap board is tongue and groove, like I mentioned before. So, naturally, at some point, you are going to have an end piece that has an extra piece of wood sticking out. Now, you can either keep that, which would look just fine OR you can rip it down and get rid of it. We happened to have the tools to do this, but a great thing that your local home improvement store offers if cutting your boards for you!
That’s right, y’all!
They will cut them for you. I believe it is a small fee, if any and that way, you don’t have to say you can’t do a project like this because you don’t happen to have these tools at the house. With the company that we have, we just happened to have what we needed. Otherwise, I would have completely used that service at the store.
So, back to ripping the board down.
Z was feeling very helpful that day and offered to do it for me so I wouldn’t lose my thumbs, or fingers, or arm or……….
Back to attaching the boards. To make sure they were secure, we hammered a finishing nail into each board .
I just left the tags on the back of the shiplap because, well, that’s just how I roll. Yup. That’s it.
Here are the finishing nails we used for the back and also for the front for the string art. 1 box did it for this one, but I will probably have to purchase another for the second piece just to make sure I have enough. (It is a little more detailed)
This is all three pieces of white wood attached.
Love how it turned out.
I found a reindeer silhouette that I really liked, but there was no way for me to enlarge it on my own computer to the size I needed, so I had Fedex enlarge it for me. I ended up going with a size of 18x24in. print.
I trimmed the piece and centered it the best I could.
Next,
I secured it with a small piece of tape and started nailing away. You hammer the finishing nails in by tracing the outline of the silhouette.
Try to keep them spaced as evenly as possible. I started to angle the ones that were in the corners so that when I applied the string, I could create softer edges for the face.
Almost done. I have to admit that this can be a little time consuming. However, things go much faster when you have two people hammering. 🙂
Nails are all in!
And here is a closeup.
Remove tape and pull paper silhouette off. It should come off pretty easily, but may leave behind a few small papers around the nail heads. If this happens, you can simply remove with tweezers.
I had this jute twine already, but you can pick this up at your local craft store for about $5.00. *Use your 50% off coupon and get it for less!
You really can’t mess it up, but one thing I will suggest is to do something I didn’t, especially when doing the antlers because when you are looking at a bunch of nails, you can forget the pattern. When doing my second project, I will definitely outline the picture FIRST with the twine! I went back afterwards and did it so it would stick out more, but that made it more difficult during the process. I saved the original image of the silhouette and just looked at that on my laptop for guidance, but if I did it to begin with, which is probably the way you are SUPPOSED TO DO String Art, it would have been easier. LOL! Oh well!
Getting there!
Now, you could simply let the reindeer be a reindeer, but since I was doing this for Christmas, my reindeer couldn’t just be any reindeer. No sir.
Mine had to be the one with the red nose……. The sparkly red nose in this case.
We attached these large picture hangers to the back for extra support because this big boy is quite heavy.
This was what the originally finished project looked like and
there really isn’t anything wrong with it.
BUT!
The more I looked at it, the more I felt like it started to look more like a “reindeer MUMMY” instead of a “rudolph, the red nosed reindeer”.
SO, my OCD made me go back over it and smooth out the lines a little more.
I like this version a lot more.
In fact, I like it so much, that I decided to do another one. But different. Not a reindeer. But Christmas. ANYWAY!
Really quickly, here is the price breakdown in case you want to try this for yourself:
Remember though, I made more than one project out of this! If you are only making the one, I will do my best to adjust:
- 1 x 6 x 8 shiplap boards from Home Depot: $ 11.97 per board (Need 7 Boards total to make more than one project. However, if only making one project, you would only need 4 Boards!)
- 1 x 3 x 8 white wood strips for back supports $ 1.48 ea.
- 1 1/4in. box of finishing nails (Shiny ones) $ 3.47
- Enlarged Reindeer head Silhouette $ 2.25
- Jute twine $ 5.99 (*Use 50% off coupon at AC Moore or Michaels to make $ 2.99)
- Picture Hangers $ 2.39
*All wood material was purchased from Home Depot for reference, including picture hangers.
Stay tuned! and
Season’s Greetings, y’all!
XOXO,
Esther
House Tour: His and Hers Shared Office
Have I ever told you about my lovely obsession with all things Ikea? I would seriously buy the entire store if it weren’t for my partner of reason, aka…… The Hubster.
I have had to pull him back a few times on things, but mostly, it is him doing the tugging.
It was no different for our office. In our past home, I was the only one “operating” out of the office area, so I made it 100% girly! I take care of the office portion of our company so it was pretty much my say in how we decorated the space before.
I’m talking hot pink chair meets aqua blue walls ……. you get the picture. 😉
Since then, things have morphed into the hubster spending more time in the office with me, so I knew that in the new space, it was going to have to be gender friendly, which I knew was going to totally cramp my style. I mean, how dare he make me feel like I have to get rid of my pink chair??? LOL!
First, I’d like to start with the desk. When the hubster and I work together, we usually are having to brainstorm with each other on projects and such so I knew that facing away from each other was not going to work for us. We needed a desk that we could both use and would allow us to gaze into one another’s eyes and think deeply about ………………. painting estimates. 😉
I purchased two of these beauties from Ikea from their Alex line.
We placed them back to back with each other and hired our awesome contractor, Steve Egloff to make us a table top. I really liked the feel of a modern look for the space so I asked him to do an industrial feel for the legs. After looking for the material and figuring out that the legs were going to cost more than we wanted to spend, Steve had a great idea to use closet rods for the area.
Absolutely GENIUS!!!! It allowed us to still have the look we wanted without the cost.
Not only cool, but anything that saves me money is a SUPER PLUS! ………….. HOLLA!
For the top, we went with a nice soft gray stain at Sherwin Williams. Now, I love being able to just say what the name of a color is, but for this stain, it wasn’t that easy. They have an area that has basic stains and since I didn’t want to wait for stain that I chose due to us having to order it, I chose, instead, to go with a clear stain that they added gray to until we got it the shade I wanted.
I wish I could have had an exact color to reference, but to be honest, it is kind of fun experimenting with the colors and knowing that you came up with the shade on your own, so if you are looking to choose a gray stain color, go to your local paint store and ask them to do the clear stain and then find a shade of gray you like in a paint color and ask them to make it as close to that color as possible and HAVE FUN!
Here is a close up of the color and natural wood peeking through from underneath.
If you haven’t figured out by now, I am really into the look and feel of invoking a coastal meets rustic meets industrial meets farm style in my house………… not complicated at all, right? Otherwise known as, tastefully eclectic. Or at least, I hope tastefully.
We knew we wanted to do a focal point in the room with an accent wall. I am a HUGE Fixer Upper fan. (*WHO ISN’T????)
I love the look of Shiplap and I wanted to bring that look into my own home, so I called on Steve, once again to install tongue and groove on the wall next to our desk.
He started out with an unfinished wood because we weren’t sure if we were going to stain it or white wash it.
Well,
it looks like white washing won out in the end.
P.S. PLEASE do NOT tell Steve. He would have a HEART ATTACK if he knew we white washed his beautiful unfinished wood. (*Conversation I had with Steve during the install: Steve: So what do you think you will do to the accent wall? Are you going to leave it as is? I think it looks great the way it is now. Me: Not sure yet? Maybe stain it, maybe white wash it? Steve: Oh NO! You never white wash perfectly beautiful unfinished oak planks.)
Ummmmmmmm, yeah………… So, please don’t tell him. It can be our secret.
We wanted to make it look weathered and not too perfectly white washed, so we tried to make it not as uniformed.
I absolutely love love love it. Sometimes our company can stress both of us out and this space is just so relaxing.
In order to get the color of the white wash, we took a small amount of paint and thinned it out significantly with water until we got it to the color we wanted.
Then finished it off with a sweet picture I picked up from Homegoods. I like to say it is more on my side so technically, I am more “like a boss” than him, but who is counting…………….. 😉
On the opposite wall, we placed the filing cabinet/shelving unit I had been eyeing for months and months. It finally went on sale at Pottery Barn and I pounced. I ended up saving almost $500!!!! From what I have seen, they usually keep it in stock. It is part of their modular Bedford line.
I am not disappointed at all. It is very sturdy and seems to be very well made. I have not regretted any purchase I have made from Pottery Barn so far. The only thing is, I have to really plan and save for the items I purchase due to their prices, but it is worth it.
In the corner, I placed a wall file holder I had in our last home that I also picked up from Ikea. Paint color on wall is the main color in our house: Benjamin Moore’s Revere Pewter, which is a “graige”. Gray/Beige.
I love that it stays on the wall and does not take up any counter space.
On the wall by the door, is our planning center for the upcoming projects that we are doing and our current projects we are working on.
These magnetic boards are also from Ikea and have white magnets that you can purchase separately there for it. I chose to use my label maker and do categories for the planning board that helps me stay on top of everything. (*I removed a lot to protect information on the projects, but you get the idea.)
I literally planned this entire room around this light fixture. Like I mentioned before, I knew I wanted that industrial feel in here and this was the only light fixture I could picture in here. Since the desk is more to the side and the light fixture is centered in the room, we swagged it over with a ceiling hook to have it centered over the desk. The best thing about the light fixture is the price. For a light fixture like this, you would probably pay a lot! Not at Ikea! Here is a link to the fixture from their Hektar line. We paid only $69 for this huge monster!
I really wanted to be able to walk in to the room and feel that it had a female presence as well as a male so I decided to go with these two chairs they sell at Costco. I purchased one white for me and……
one black for him. I am so glad that I did. He has a tendency to show up splattered in paint or some foreign matter from time to time, so the black helps to hide that. 😉 *LOVE YOU, BABE!
And last but certainly not least, here is my disorganized closet. Can I just tell how much I love having a closet in my office? I know it seems so simple. A little closet in a room. However, I did not have this in my last office and it REALLY makes a difference. I can hide stuff in there like a printer! Mine always became an eyesore and even though I needed it, I didn’t like the junky look it had. Now, I can just close the door and forget about it. It is wireless, so it isn’t necessary to attach to my computer and I just sneak the extension power cord under the door and plug it in right next to my desk. Problem solved!
Well, my lovely friends, thank you thank you thank you for spending more time with me and taking another peak into this crazy thing I call a home.
I hope you have enjoyed another installment of the new house tour.
That fall time air is really calling my name and I hope to share a new recipe with you next time as well as a post about the true heart of our home……… THE KITCHEN!
Until next time,
XOXO,
ESTHER
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