Mighty Fine Twine Design

Since I started this blog, I have been soaking up creative project ideas from all over the place. Some are fairly easy to do, and others are a bit more ambitious to take on (like the custom day bed I am currently working on). It used to be that when I walked into a store I was like most other guys, on a mission to get in and get out with laser-like focus on accomplishing the task. Call it the "Two Minute Rule." They say that when robbing a bank, the countdown clock starts as soon as you walk through the door and you have two minutes to pull the heist successfully and every second after increases your chances of getting caught exponentially. That has always been my approach in stores (not the robbery, the timing. As far as you know anyway.). Research beforehand, know what you want, purchase, leave. No browsing, no trying things on, no chatting it up with the bored sales associate folding the endless pile of shirts. But now, when I walk into a store that has funky decor, I'm like a sponge soaking up ideas for future projects. So, naturally, I spent waaaay more time in this particular store looking for inspiration and ideas that I could subsequently "borrow" from. To protect my man card, we will say this store's name rhymes with "Manthropology" and leave it at that.

The cabinet that inspired this project.

I didn't have an old cabinet handy, so I borrowed from another idea I saw on Pinterest, and Frankenstein'ed them together. The shipping pallets are the gift that keep on giving. I saved the scraps that I couldn't use for my wall shelf project, and re-purposed them as my frame background. Then, I just printed out the picture of the above cabinet, taped it onto my backer as a template and drilled holes through all of the thread intersecting points with a 1/8" drill bit.

Photoshop skillz and duct tape.

Using a $4 ball of twine as my thread and a piece of looped ribbon wire as my needle, I just recreated the pattern using some finger muscle and redneck engineering. After I was done, I used a lighter to burn down some of the stray fibers and put some super glue on the knots to make sure they hold.

Before adding the frame

Then it was time to add the picture frame. I got one at Walgreens for about $2.99. I made sure to get one that slid on and off the picture backer so that I could change out the photo down the road, since I would next glue the back of the frame to the boards with Liquid Nails. To allow myself a little bit of wiggle room, I created some separation between the two with felt furniture dots.

Add the frame with picture, and...boom goes the dynamite. The end result is something unique and perfectly imperfect, all for less than $8 in materials.

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