This easy tutorial for how to make butterfly string art can be customized for any shape! I’ll show you step by step how to make a string art wall decor on wood!
A number of years ago, my son made a Batman string art sign for his cousin as part of our homemade gift exchange. He did the entire project himself from painting the board, to cutting out the logo to hammering in the nails.
The only time I had to help was to tie the knots. Honestly, I think I’ll be helping him with that even as an adult! The kid cannot seem to tie a knot!
This year, he wanted to make a homemade gift for his girlfriend who loves butterflies and the Beatles. He picked out the colors and song lyrics and got to work.
Supplies to Make String Art Signs
The most important thing to pay attention to is making sure your nails have a substantial head on them. Most nails have a very tiny head because you normally want it to practically disappear into the wood.
With string art, you want a much larger head so that the string has something to stop it from sliding off the top of the nail. The size of the nails you use for your string art project are really crucial to making sure it works and you aren’t frustrated!
These decorative nails are my favorite that I’ve found. I love the dark finish as well for the overall look of your finished string art sign.
For the string, I use embroidery floss. It’s cheap and comes in so many colors! I usually just find it at a craft store for about 40 cents a skein.
- Nails with a large head (black finish or copper finish)
- Embroidery Floss
- Blank Wood Board
- Cricut Vinyl, Midnight
How to Make String Art Signs
We always start by finding an image that works for our project. In this case, we did a Google image search for butterflies and found one that had simple lines and would allow for different colors of string.
We sized it to our board, printed it out and then cut out just the image. Next he tapes the image onto the board so it doesn’t slide around at all as he’s hammering the nails.
As you’re hammering your nails in, make sure they’re deep enough into the wood that they aren’t wobbly. You don’t want to hammer them the whole way down, though, since you need to leave some room for the string to wind around it.
You will want to find a spacer for between your nails so that all of them are spaced evenly apart. We normally just use a regular sized pencil. We’ve found it to be the perfect amount of space between our nails.
After you have your first nail hammered in, just lay the pencil down alongside it, and then put your second nail alongside the other side of the pencil. Repeat this around your entire image.
Once your nails are all in, it’s time to wrap the string. Start with one color and make a tight knot around one of the nails. Some people prefer to work in a pattern with their string while others like the look of just randomly wrapping it. There are lots of images for “string art” if you do a quick Google search to see which method you prefer.
All you’re doing is wrapping the string around nails, though. You only need to tie knots on the very first nail and the very last nail. As long as you pull you string tight enough as you’re working, everything else will stay in place!
My son chose to lightly outline his shape with the string. He filled in the inside of the butterfly and then did one small line of thread as his outline. You can see how it looks when you wrap the outside of your shape or letters more substantially in this string art tutorial by Here Comes the Sun.
For this butterfly project, we obviously used multiple colors. A lot of string art projects only use one color for the whole thing. Just be sure to buy your colors accordingly. We had to use about 2-3 skeins of each color for this piece of wall art.
How to Cut Letters out of Vinyl
For this Butterfly String Art, I used my Cricut Explore Air 2 and some midnight vinyl for the letters. If you aren’t familiar with how to cut letters out of vinyl, be sure to check out my Cricut 101 for Beginners post. It will explain all of it in more detail and hopefully answer any questions!
Once you have your letters cut out, just transfer them with some Cricut transfer tape, and your project is done!
Such an easy project, but it looks so great! You really can’t go wrong with a personalized project!
More Great Butterfly Projects:
- Butterfly Footprint Art from The Cards We Drew
- Butterfly Cupcake Toppers from A Subtle Revelry