Supplies:
- Wood board. Mine was already stained, but you could paint or stain your wood as needed.
- Twine
- Hot glue gun
- Scissors
- Flowers and greenery. I used sola wood flowers, but you could also make paper or felt flowers, or use silk flowers.
- wood markers to cover up scratches on your wood board if needed.
My wood was a leaf end to an old table. It was pretty banged up, but had a nice finish to it. I took wood markers that I bought from Dollar Tree and covered up some of the marks. If you have not used wood markers before, they work great in my opinion. They really helped give this piece of wood a new life. I color a scratch with the marker, then wipe it off before it dries to help blend the marker line into the wood. I just used a paper towel to wipe off the extra. Here are some before and after photos to see how well it worked.
Once your wood is prepped, stained, painted, and ready to go, it is time to add the twine. I applied a little hot glue directly to the front on my wood board and glued down the end of my twine. My flowers and greenery will cover up this glue. You could also attach the twine to the back of the board, but it will be more covered up if you attach it to the front. Now just keep winding your twine around your board until you are happy with the amount. I recommend doing more than you think you will need. It does use up a lot of twine.
Now cut the end of your twine and glue it to your board. I glued it in the front since it will be covered up with flowers. I also glued this piece directly to the other pieces of twine instead of the board, because we will be moving the twine and I did not want one strand of twine to not move with all the others.
For our cross we want the twine to be thicker at the ends, then come in some towards the middle. To do this you simply tie some twine around the strands of twine you wrapped around your board and tie them as tightly as you would like depending on how much you want to take them in. Cut off any extra pieces of twine and you can apply glue if you want to help hold things down and together. Again, I did all of this in the front of my board since my flowers and greenery will cover it up. This just keeps the back a little more clean.
I then did the same thing but this time in the horizontal direction. Wrapp your twine around your board and then tie it together at the center to taper it in. You could count the number of times your wrap your twine to insure you wrap the side the same amount. I did not count, and just wrapped mine as many times as I thought it needed/looked nice.
Now it is time to add your flowers and greenery. There are so many different ways you could go about doing this, which can make this part a bit intimidating. I recommend just taking your time, and trying many different things, until you like what you have come up with. Lay pieces of greenery and flowers down to help you visualize what it might look like before you glue anything down. I used sola wood flowers and chose not to color them. I then added a little pop of color with some greenery/berries. You could also use paper flowers, felt flowers, or even silk flowers. I recommend starting with what you have and just play around with it. I also like to keep the two diagonal sections similar to each other. So, whatever I did in the top left side of my cross I did in the lower right side of my cross.
These make very pretty home decorations. They could be for Easter decorations or kept up all year around. They would also be a nice gift for someone who has lost someone important to them. I am happy with how mine turned out, and that I was able to bring new life to an old piece of well used wood. It looks even better in person. The pictures just cannot capture its true beauty.
