A collection of string art patterns to use for free

Easy beginner-friendly projects. You have simple silhouettes to follow, some with nail marks.

Consider, though, that nail marks are just an indication: the real spacing depends on the final size of your project and size of your nails. For more about this, check our string art FAQs.

This is a quick and easy string art project, perfect for music lovers.

Here you have a simple outline to follow: pin it on your board then start hammering the nails. I suggest you to start in the middle of the design, then going outwards.

To decide the spacing between the nails, you have to consider the size of your project, how thick you want the weave to be, how thick is your chosen yarn.

You can choose two weaving options: just follow the outline, without filling in the shape, or filling the shape  and then outline the contour of the design. Feeling fancy? You can fill the space in a random manner or following a regular pattern, like drawing Bézier curves!

This project is all about our passion for Irish dance.

Here I drew the two types of Irish dance shoes, light and heavy. For an explanation about them and their peculiarities, read the blog post where I talk about the how and why of this craft.

To this design, we added the shoelace bows separately, tying them to a nail. The rest of the laces are contoured. You can notice, mainly on the right shoe, that I left an empty space that seems unnatural. That is where the shoe seams are: I like leaving empty space to have a glimpse of the wooden board underneath. It’s one of the main customisations I do while preparing a string art design pattern.

Yes, another Irish-themed pattern. And a classic one.

Of this, we made multiple variants in small sizes to become presents for a few Irish dance friends.

In one case, we used the full template of the shamrock with the three hearts, one for each leaf. It provided a nice double border that could be seen as just a thick border or a three-hearted shamrock.

For this small project, I drew the outline of my design, but when I wanted to make a proper pattern I decided to do something different.

This pattern has not just the outline of the figure, but also the marks for each nail. Keeping the outline, even if in a lighter color, makes the design easier to read. If the size of your project and nails and the thickness of your yarn is ok with the nail spacing I chose, you can follow the nail marks to hammer down. Otherwise, you have the outline of the figure and can choose to place your nails in other places and quantities.

Here you can find the patterns for string art designs involving additional materials, such as LED lights or decorations or other than yarn.
Follow the template as provided or remove the additions to have just the simple silhouette project.

This project is simple in its weaving, but requires a careful planning, because it includes non-string art elements such as LED lights that have to be place at the right moment. We have a dedicated blog post to know more about the details of how we made our string art Christmas tree.

The first step is hammering down the nails, then you have to drill holes for the garland and the LED lights. You have then to place your LEDs (they will rest behind the yarn and have the end with batteries or plug on the back). After pulling the wire from the back of the board through a pre-drilled hole, carefully weaved it by hand. Remember to have one light for the top star!

The following step is the proper yarn weaving, while the final one is the garland. We made one in golden thread and weaved it around our tree, through the previously drilled holes, and around the five nails drawing the top star.

You can then add as many decorations you want on top of your string art tree. Using nails with a big head, we scattered golden and red bells all over the surface of the tree.

The following templates have nail marks and more indications about the weaving, since the yarn follows more complex patterns.

Also find a pattern by Regina Ribeiro, that we used for a Christmas project. Since the original author is no longer available online, I wanted to share her work with proper credit not to loose her name in the ocean of the internet.

This pattern is not a simple outline: it has the nails positions carefully marked, with the indication of the yarn weaving as well. The weaving follows the Bézier curves principle, a technique also known as symmography, that gives its best on a string art project.

It was our first try with this kind of symmography, but it was a pretty easy start. The wings, head and halo are straightforward: begin from the first nail and reach the last one, no magic, no complex tricks. With the circular halo, you can start wherever you feel comfortable.

The body is not as easy. Start wherever you feel comfortable, but you could need a few trials. Don’t worry if at the first go you  have to unravel the yarn and start over: be prepared for it, it’s quite normal.