This is, by far, my favorite of all the hand crafts my boys have made. My five year old made this nail string art horse head and it now proudly resides on our mantle. Both have been begging me to find more templates for them to create more nail string projects as the five year old thoroughly enjoyed it and the six year old was rather envious.
Country Living had this featured in their magazine awhile ago, and templates for horse, bunny and bull are available to print here. You may need to resize according to the size of your wood.
Once the horse head template was secured (with tape) on top of the wood Wesley was able to follow the template and nail in each nail on top of the dot. I helped him remove the paper once all the nails were in place and then got him started on the string.
I found it useful to teach him to wrap the piece of string around each nail twice. It helped prevent the whole thing from unraveling. (We learned this trick the painful way!)
He also needed to be shown where not to run the string (like in the space you can see above between the horses nose and neck, and between the ears.) It took a few mistakes before it clicked and he realized why it wouldn’t work to spread the string over that space, but he eventually got it!
By the time he finished with it there were a few neglected nails, so I finished it off for him to include all the nails in the project.
Having scoured the web for ideas for future nail and string art projects for the boys here are the ideas I am considering one of these two for the next string art project:
The nail and string art Feather from Design Curiosities or the State Map and heart from the Harpster Home.
