String Art: The Easiest Woodworking Project That You'll Ever Meet

The Cadette Woodworker badge is one of my favorite Girl Scout badges. It's a real skill-building badge, and a great way to encourage kids to get a little outside of their comfort zone. Sometimes kids have never built with tools before, and sometimes they don't feel capable, or they feel like woodworking is a boy thing.

Or sometimes a kid has built with tools all her life, but she forgets that she enjoys working with her hands because she enjoys reading so much more and only wants to read, read, read her whole life through.

****cough, Will, cough****

Woodworking can also look intimidating, because there are so many elaborate, sophisticated woodworking projects out there in the world to see, and if a kid isn't confident even using a hammer, how on earth is she going to get inspired to follow the instructions to make an entire bookshelf right away?

But just hammering nails into scrap wood? That's not product-oriented enough for a kid who wants to BUILD something.

So that's why string art? Is the best. You don't even need a tutorial for it, because it's just that easy.

You just get yourself a piece of wood, cut it to size, paint or stain it if you want (I tried to encourage Will to do this, because I'm working on getting her to have higher standards in what she creates, but I didn't push the issue when she didn't want to, because it's her string art, not mine, sigh...), draw or trace a template, hammer nails with a wide head along the pattern--

and yes, you can even do this on my family room floor

--and then tie on embroidery floss and wrap it around the nails to create a pretty picture:

I love that even my kid who's not as detail-oriented can create something this cute; I think that's really encouraging for a kid, and will help her be even more detail-oriented in the future.

P.S. Psst, want to know what I'm doing all day? Follow my Craft Knife Facebook page and you'll find out!