4.19.2014

MONOGRAM THUMBTACK ART

Welcome to my first DIY! If you follow me on instagram (@kristarobertso) you saw this photo:



 I saw a similar idea on Pinterest and decided to venture out and make this fun double monogram using thumbtacks. I know I received a lot of questions about it, so I thought I would share the process (and let me tell you-- it's a process) with you all!

I first looked ALL over the city for stupid dumb GOLD thumbtacks. Do you know they're basically impossible to find?? Seriously, who knew? (not this girl, obviously). I mean I even made Andrew go with me to look around his town (outside the city) still, no luck. GRRRR

I did however find LOTS of silver ones, but I wanted gold-- was that so hard of an ask? I decided to make another piece of thumbtack art (will be sown next Sunday) with the silver thumbtacks I found, but I knew for this piece, I needed gold.

After almost giving up, I decided to turn to the good ole internet and BAM! Found these bad boys. I was a little nervous because the item is for 6 100 packs of thumbtacks (aka 600 tacks), but I got them anyway thinking I could just use the extra for another project.

Want to know where 600 thumbtacks got me? Here:


WTF!!!!! ^@#&*@% (<--- bad="" font="" here="" s="" word="">

I was furious! I needed like 30 more thumbtacks to be done. Ughhhhhhhh. So I bought more, waited 3-5 business days and finally completed my masterpiece. It was rough.

So when buying these, get 3x more than you think you will need and you might... just not have enough. Get 4x. Here are more options for gold thumbtacks.

Anyways… let's talk about how I actually made this thing! First bought a 12x12" canvas and started sketching the outline (in pencil!). What people normally do for this is print out the monogram (or other art) and sketch over it BUTTT since live in New York (and the digital age) I don't own a working printer so it was free hand or bust. What really helped was making my monogram on the computer and dividing it up like so:



Next I was able to draw those same lines on the canvas and start filling in boxes one at a time. Something like this:




What's nice about making the monogram is that it's all very even. All of the lines line up. So lots of drawing and erasing happened in the next few steps:


See how the all the lines line up below?

Then I erased all the outside lines (the inside lines don't matter since they'll be covered up)

So now we're on to the not so fun part: using the thumbtacks. So these canvas's are all the thicker ones so it's real easy to stick the thumbtacks in. What I didn't think of was when you get to the wood part on the outline of the canvas. You need a HAMMER get these thumbtacks through. Or you can get really creative like me and use the next best thing. Which at the time was the bottom of my Essie bottle… nbd, right? 


ALSO, ugh this part sucked: there are knots in different parts of the wood and your thumbtacks WILL NOT go in. No matter how many times (22) you try. Your thumbtacks will literally break and you will eventually cry. (You can see my trouble in the K on the side and at the top). So when these come up, just move past them and figure it out at the end (aka glue your broken tacks to these places).


Now that you've filled out your outline, start to fill in the middle. Go row by row for a nice clean look. 
 

Seeing as you have enough thumbtacks, you're all done! You should have a very fun and cool thumbtack canvas. Enjoy and show it off-- it was hard work.

Here is a preview for more thumbtack art next week:
How to make a Monogram out of Thumbtacks, How to DIY your Monogram


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