String Monogram

Little "Beebee Eenan" (according to our sprout) had his first birthday, and since he's happy as a clam eating cardboard or whatnot, I decided to give a birthday present to his Mama, to help her decorate his space:

I knew for a while that I wanted to do this for his birthday present but lost track of time and ended up making this late the night before. In my scrambling for supplies, I lucked out and found a piece of scrap wood in our garage that was left from the previous residents. (Thanks, old people!) I took care of the spider webs and gave the newly washed piece of wood a good coat of acrylic paint. While the paint was drying, I drew a monogram E on graph paper, and cut it out, which worked out great for nailing. I just laid the letter down on the wood and put in a nail every 1/2" along the outside edge of the cut-out letter and removed it once all the nails were placed. Then, with my lifetime supply of baker's twine, I tightly wound the string around the nails. This is a single piece of string, I'll have you know.

My grandma taught me how to make hot pads with yarn using a similar technique, but I had forgotten about it until I saw something on Pinterest. This is a little more chaotic in my string usage. There are no specific patterns with the string, I just filled it in until all the blank spots were covered.

It was much easier than it looks. The most time-consuming part was nailing those little suckers. That being said, I wasn't disillusioned at the amount of time that it was going to take. It probably took me 3 hours total, including painting, nailing and stringing. Not too bad, I think.

So, what have you done of late that is much easier than it looks?