Wooden Thread Holder

I'm so glad I attempted & succeeded in making myself a new "custom" thread holder. Like I said in this post the other day, my current holder is at it's max capacity. So I ventured out to pick up my supplies:

• Piece of 3x1' pre-cut wood
• Two 3' long pieces of decorative wood panels
• Box of 3.5" long nails (wanted to have enough room to place thread spool & matching bobbin thread)

I figured I'd used my leftover teal spray paint from the mason jar vase, to color the whole thing...but more on that later...

From the 'panels', I cut & sanded 2 pieces (12" long) to be go along the top & bottom, then cut 2 pieces (34" long) to go along the sides.

Then I used wood glue to adhere those to the main piece of wood.

While the glue was drying, I decided to spray paint the nails white...I could've left them silver, but didn't think that would look as pretty. So I dug around and found an old piece of super thick poster-board...and poked the nails thru it to keep them upright...that made it easy to spray them all quickly and thoroughly. YAY!

spray painted nails - before & after

After the glue completely dried, I screwed on a toothed picture hanger on the back. Gettin closer...

Then I began to use the teal spray paint....one problem, it wasn't really adhering onto the wood!! Crap.

I realized forgot primer. Double crap.

So I got a baby wipe & tried to get off as much as a I could. Not all of it would come off.

Plan B...Acrylic Paint.

Luckily I had a few back up colors that I scored at Michael's forever ago for just $.49 each - mustard yellow and coral. Coral won. And Kapri was SO happy to help me paint with a little sponge brush! Thank goodness it was a dark enough color to cover the little bit of teal spray paint that I couldn't get off. Phew.

After the paint dried I *attempted* to put in all the nails...32 total.Only to realize this must be the STRONGEST piece of wood on the planet. The damn nails would NOT go through, and it's only like 1/2" thick...what the?? My neighbors must've wondered why there was crazy banging noises coming from my garage. My thumb & first finger on my left hand were so incredibly sore (almost raw even) from tightly holding onto the nails for so long. Oye.

Plan C...use less nails...only 21 now (sad) & bust out the cordless drill - time to get crazy.

*sigh*...another near fail. Even on the "drill hole" setting, the wood still put up a fight. I literally had to put my body weight onto the drill to get a tiny little hole...From there I dipped the tips of the nails in some E6000 glue and put them in each hole...then put another dollop of glue around the edges. I figured the aesthetics wouldn't really matter at the base of the nail, since the spool of thread would totally cover it anyway.

Then we wait...and wait...a little more glue...and a little more waiting. I. Hate. Waiting. for things to dry. It took about 4 days total...now finally - SUCCESS!!!!

Now my beautiful thread has a beautiful little home!

I kept the other one too, which I'll use in addition to this one and will be a good place for my embroidery thread since I don't have as many of those...yet  ;-)