DIY Temple String Art

A few months ago I was trying to come up with a craft project for our upcoming 'Relief Society Super Saturday'.

I had Google searched ideas over and over and I ended up finding a picture of some temple string art, I don't even remember which temple it was a picture of, but it sparked my mind and thought it would make the perfect craft.

I had a an idea of what I wanted so I started sketching my own design of some temples, and I was really excited with what I came up with.

I had to make a 'trial run' to see if this would all work, and actually look like a temple, so this was the sample I created. I also needed a sample to show the women at church what we would be creating.

This is the Mount Timpanogos temple.

I loved the result, so I put together a tutorial together if you want to make your own.

First of all, I love to get good deals, and I don't really like to waste things.

My parents had been remodeling their house for a while, and I was there a few months ago and saw this beautiful wood that they weren't going to use.

I gladly took it off of their hands :)

At the time I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it, but I knew I could use it up.

I decided that this project would be perfect.

The wood was 1"x 8" and 48" long, so I cut 4 pieces at 12" each.

Using the hand saw was quite the workout!

Don't worry, I only cut the first one by hand.

I then grabbed some sandpaper and mainly went around the edges to give them a softer look.

I had tried a grey colored stain on the wood, but I did not like the way it turned out.

I ended up using some grey acrylic craft paint. 

I dipped the paint brush in water to water the grey color down a little and give it that 'stained' look.

See? That was more the color I was shooting for.

I then got my template ready.

I felt like my pencil sketches were ready so I re-drew it out on a regular sized paper with marker.

(I have included a link at the end of this post so you can print out the template for free).

This one is of the Mount Timpanogos temple.

I spent quite a bit of time measuring the lines and making sure it had the look I was going for.

If you look closely at each corner of the building, there is a dot or small circle. Those dots/circles is where you will place the nails.

I then centered the template and taped it to the wood.

Taking a hammer and a nail, tap the nail in each circle shown on the template.

You just need the nail to make a tiny hole so when you remove the paper you will see where the holes are.

Here's a close-up of when I had finished going around the whole template and making the nail marks.

Once you have made all of the nail marks you can remove the paper.

Next you will tap a nail into each nail hole you made.

Obviously you want to leave most of the nail sticking out so you can wrap the string. 

To start, I tied a little know around one nail, but you can also start with a small dab of glue from a hot glue gun. 

From there it was just like playing Connect the Dots.

(It's also helpful to have your paper template close by to see where the lines actually need to be).

Every so often I would place a small dab of glue, from my hot glue gun, just right under the nail head so the string didn't come loose.

The string I used was actually thread from my sewing machine, so it was pretty thin.
I ended up going around a couple of times so you could see the string a little bit better.
Once I felt like the string looked thick enough, I placed one last dab of glue under a nail head, held the string through the glue for a few seconds, and then cut off the remaining string, making sure to get it as close to the glue as you can.

I have uploaded this template to my Etsy shop, you can find the template for this temple here
Here is my post from the actual Super Saturday we had, (Relief Society Super Saturday) I ended up drawing up a template for 5 temples, all of the templates and info about how we set up for the actual day is in that post.
Let me know if you have any questions!