B143: Hitting the Nail on the Head

Teardrop Nail Picture (like mine)

​I’d hazard a guess that there wasn’t a home in Carrick in the 1970s that didn’t have one of these homemade nail pictures!  We definitely had.  I remember making very like this one in 5th class in the Presentation Convent in 1976! 

​We had Sister Bernadette that year and she did a lot of arts and crafts with us … embroidery, knitting, crochet, painting as well as the nail pictures.  We were in the upstairs classroom “up the garden” that could be seen through the gates from New Street.  It had a covered outside metal staircase that brought you up from the yard below to the classroom door.  It was fairly noisy with a clatter of 11-year-old girls running up and down them all day.  Mostly we preferred to be running down them and out the gate on our way home for the day.  But we all loved going to class when arts and crafts were on that day.

Making a nail picture - as children we left the numbered pattern on until finished!

​Back in the day we had to gather the individual materials – tracing paper to set out the pattern , 1 inch nails, a piece of chipboard thick enough to hold the nails (I think I got mine from Nolan’s builders yard), a screw-in hanging hook, black serge material thumb-tacked on the board, three colours of embroidery thread (bought from the lovely Mrs. Glascott on the Main Street), finishing metallic thread for a bit of bling….and some of my mother’s nail varnish to finish off the nail heads.  I was amazed to find that these days you can buy ready-made kits on Amazon with all of the bits and bobs needed.

Above: Just a sample of the kits available nowadays

Because we were only 11 years old, the pictures we did were fairly straight-forward.  I remember doing a tear-drop with white, yellow and orange thread layers topped off with gold metallic thread.  Some of the other girls did star-bursts.  Nowadays, the kits on Amazon are of all sorts….just search under “string art kit”!
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We started by covering the board with the material tacking it down at the back with thumb tacks.  Then we taped the paper pattern with each of the nail placings marked with a dot.  Then we hammered in the nails halfway, into every dot around the pattern, leaving enough nail to wrap 4 layers of thread.  We then started wrapping the first layer of thread around the nails following a pattern e.g. 1 to 9, 2 to 10 etc ………being careful to tie the thread on the first and last nail.  Each layer was slightly different numbers so that it ended up in a 3-D effect.  When finished threading we tore away the pattern.  We finished off by putting nail varnish on the nail heads and screwing in a hanging hook.

A more intricate one!

​It was a great way to teach kids their numbers, how to follow instructions and a bit of manual dexterity.  And you ended up with a Christmas present to give your Mammy!! ❤️

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Bucket List Items Ticked Off in the above Blog post 143
​Number 21 - Creative

• Create a Piece of Art

​Other Blog Posts
Blog 11 - Sydney, Australia
Blog 12 - Hong Kong, China
Blog 17 - Beijing, Xi'an & Shanghai, China
Blog 19 - California, USA
Blog 27 - Scotland
Blog 28 - Barbados
Blog 29 - Canada

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