State String Art

So after surfing Pinterest for hours I kept seeing string art and thought how hard could this be?

As I may have mentioned, my parents recently moved to Florida so for Mother's Day I decided to make her string art in the shape of New Jersey (where we are from) and Florida (where they live now). I will go through the how to and pictures now followed by what I would have done differently.

First, of course I went to Michael's and Home Depot for supplies. I got the two plain wood plaques from Michael's and the nails and paint samples from Home Depot. You can really use any nails you want depending on the thickness of the wood you are using and the look you are going for.

Of course, I choose green for NJ as the Garden State and yellow for Florida as the sunshine state.

First, I painted the plain wood plaques in each color (John Deere imitation not intended, but appropriate).

Next I went online to print an outline of each state. Once I printed it I taped it to the painted wood to use as the outline for the nails. I didn't mark anything, but I tried to space the nails as evenly as possible.

After all the nails were in place, I started with the thread. I just used regular sewing thread I had laying around. I thought it would be a cool look to use green thread on the green and yellow for the yellow... more on that later.

So, there really isn't any rhyme or reason to the thread. Well, at least not for me. I just went all random. Although I will say, at first I didn't do an outline and I thought it looked a little strange so I did end up going around so there was a distinct outline of each shape.

That's it! Easy Peasy! So a few things I would change if I had to do it over... 1 - I would not use the same color thread as the paint. Looking back this seems like a no brainer and I don't know what I was thinking. 2 - The nails I choose were a little longer than I would have liked, but no one will know that except me.

Also, my final idiot move of the day, I was in the process of emailing myself the photos to post and I deleted them so they didn't send. However, they will arrive in Florida in the next day or two and I will post the final product as soon as my mom sends me some pictures!

What do you think? Have you tried anything similar? What color thread do you think I should have used instead (I will take notes for next time)?