DIY - I left my heart in Boston

So last night I got some unexpected news - our summer school site was going to be shut down for the day today due to the excessive heat (our air conditioner isn't working.) Not that I don't enjoy teaching, but an unplanned day off is really about the best thing that can happen to someone like me. I vowed to use my day to it's fullest. After exercising and going out for lunch with a friend, I decided I would take on a craft from the Harpster Home that I have been eying for a while. I chose to do this project with a map of Boston, my absolute favorite city in the word.

Things you need for this project:

• A square piece of wood
• Paint
• A map of a place you love (I found mine via Google search here)
• Scissors
• Painters tape
• About 100 1-inch nails
• Hammer
• String (complementary color to your paint)
  
  
  Start by painting your piece of wood with your chosen color. I got one of the little sample cans of Martha Stewart paint in Sea Glass (they were on sale for 75 cents!) and there's so much leftover!

Using painters tape, attach your map to your piece of wood.

Start nailing your little nails around the outer edges of your map. Make sure that anytime you have a corner, you put a nail right where the two lines meet. This will help define the shape of your map piece.

I intentionally skipped a few spots on my map, as it would have been too hard to properly wrap the string around them later.

When you're finished with the nails, you can remove your map piece.

 

This next part was actually really fun. All you have to do is wind the string around the nails, going from outer nail to inner heart nail. Each nail in the inner heart nail will support several loops of string - this is because there's so any on the outside. Really, the more nails you can fit into the middle heart, the better, when it comes to wrapping later (lesson learned for next time I do this project!)

You need to be careful with certain map pieces. On mine, the middle right side of it juts downward, which was weird when stretching the yarn back to the heart. I ended up skipping some of the nails , because it just wouldn't have worked to put yarn on them (you can see an example of that in the photo below, where the nails curve down near the top of the map.)

 

Once you're finished that part... you're done!! A very simple, fun project that only took a couple of hours. Enjoy!