I just love flags made from strips of wood! They look so beautiful hanging on a wall. What I don’t love is the price! You too?!
It is almost Memorial Day and the (un)official start of summer! To commemorate this very important and solemn occasion, I decided to make this cute wooden flag for my patriotic display.
Materials for this project:
1 Paper Plate
1 No 10 Flat Paint Brush
Tools for this project:
Hot Glue Gun
Hot Glue Sticks
Rope (Okay that is probably a material not a tool, but I placed it in the wrong picture) 😉
Ruler or a Yardstick
Paint four of your sticks white and five of them red. Let dry on parchment or waxed paper. Newspaper will stick to the paint and not look so pretty. I also painted the edges of my sticks, not necessary, but I liked the way it looked over not painted.
After your paint sticks are dry, line them up face down alternating the red and white colors. Place the two remaining paint sticks across all your sticks centering them the way you want. Hot glue in place.
While the glue is drying, let’s start on the blue field of stars. I used a pair of old blue jeans. Using my ruler, I measured and cut a 6-inch square from my jeans. This will be in proportion to the length of the paint sticks.
Once cut, start to pull the threads along the edges of the demin square. This will create a fringe or frayed edge and will add to the texture of the piece. Notice that 2 sides of your square have blue fringe and 2 sides have white. That is just the nature of denim.
Okay, the glue on your paint sticks should be dry by now. Flip the piece over. Notice the 2 sticks that are holding all of the rest of the sticks together are longer and poke out past the rest. You will need to cut these off. I used the Exacto knife for this.
Score both sides of the paint stick and snap the piece off. Sand the entire piece to smooth all the edges and to wear off the paint around the edges.
Glue the denim piece to the wood strips. Making sure not to glue down the frayed edges.
Now for the stars! I found these gold star buttons in my mom’s button box. She passed when I was 28 so having this button box has been a great treasure of mine. 😊 You can use any buttons for this. I love little white buttons for this project also.
These star buttons are shank-style buttons, meaning that there are no holes in the button itself, but in a “loop” under the button. You will need to cut the shank off in order for the button to lay flat when glued into place. You will need small wire cutter to remove the plastic shank.
Hot glue your buttons to the denim. You can place them in a random pattern or symmetrically like I did.
Now I glued a rope hanger to the back of my flag, but you can make your flag a “leaner” and prop it up against something.
So here is my paint stick flag all finished with the rest of my patriotic collection. I love how it turned out don’t you?
If you decide to make this little gem for your patriotic collection, would you please send me a picture of it? I would LOVE to see what you came up with! 😊
