State of the Art, Art of the State

I've been dying to do something creative lately. My latest creative project (crafting a baby) has been pretty time and energy consuming, and other than the tiny human I'm growing, I haven't really made anything in months. Ok, I haven't done ANYthing in months.  I saw these and couldn't stop thinking about them. But on etsy these bad boys are going for anywhere from $45-$80 EACH plus up to $70 for shipping. Forget about it! DIY, baby.  I needed to make a California, Utah, Idaho, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and an Arkansas for my walls, stat! 

My friend, Carly, met me in the lumber yard at Lowe's yesterday and we got our craft on while the kids played all day. They had fun, we had fun, and the results are fantastic! 

For this project, We used cheap pine 1x3's, and cut them into  17 1/2 inch lengths with my chop saw. It took 15 six foot boards to make 12 "squares" for states (a set of 6 for each of us, apparently we move a lot). The boards weren't "rustic" enough so we painstakingly (but worth it!) took wood chisels and an electric sander to each piece and distressed them all. I would recommend buying furring strips instead of raw lumber if you want to do this project, because theyre already sort of garbage-for-lumber quality and you'll save a lot of time with distressing. 

I should have taken a photo of the back. We attached them together with two 1x1 furring strips cut to 16 inch lengths.  There are two of them running perpendicular to the horizontal boards. 3/4inch screws probably would've been a better idea, but since we were mass producing these suckers, we opted for nail gun and air compressor and they assembled very quickly. 

We made a cocktail with some grey and walnut stains and they're drying beautifully in my garage. 

Now I  trying to decide whether or not I wang to paint the states, or spend a zillion hours doing awesome string art like these ideas:

If I go for (easy) and just paint them, I might do a string heart on our "city" in each one. Either way, there will definitely be a string art W added to my wall very soon. 

We pla to finish them next week. I'll post pics!