Hey friends!

I hope you all had an awesome Memorial Day weekend!  I had a great time with my fam, and also managed to throw a little something together for my living room!  Here is my DIY Wall Art I made from wood shims!

DIY Wall Art from Wood Shims

How fun is that??

This is really simple!

I started with a 2′ x 4′ piece of plywood like this…

Plywood 2x4

I kept mine this size and didn’t trim it down at all.

I bought a couple packs of wood shims from Lowe’s.  ** There are two sizes of wood shims.  The ones photographed are smaller shims, but I used the LONGER shims for this project.  I somehow managed to forget a good photo, but this is what wood shims are and they can be found in the lumber or trim aisle.

wood shims

I drew a line down the center of my board to mark the middle.  I laid my shims down like this and rotated the direction they went after every 2 shims.  Shims are thicker on one end, so this gave it a really fun, textured look.

DIY Wall Art How To

I used my Ryobi AirStrike Nailer and Gorilla Wood Glue to attach them to my board.

Ryobi AirStrike Battery NailerI LOVE LOVE LOVE this tool!  It will shoot up to 2″ brad nails and you don’t have to hook it to an air compressor!  Legit.  Plus, it uses the same battery as my drill making it super convenient.

I ran the shims off the shorter edges like this.  I wanted to make sure my whole sheet of plywood was covered.

Wall Art from wood shims

Next I used my Ryobi Battery Jig Saw to trim off my extra edges!  This part was simple because I just followed the line of the plywood!

Ryobi Battery Jig Saw

I used 1×3″ furring strips to trim my edges.  I did the short sides first and then the longer sides.

DIY Wood Wall Art Tutorial

Closer shot…

Wall Art DIY Tutorial

At this point I gave the whole thing a coat of one of my favs…

Rust-Oleum Ultimate Wood Stain in Early American

rust-oleum-early-american

I knew it would be a booger to get into the gaps once I trimmed the top so I went out of order!

Finally, I added 1×2″ furring strips to the sides to cover my rough edges like this!

DIY Wall Art How to 1

I stained those pieces and let them dry before I distressed it a bit!  I use my Ryobi Corner Cat finish sander to distress the edges…

Ryobi Corner Cat Sander

Once again… Another amazing tool that you need to add to your line up!  This guy is GREAT for giving things a distressed edge in seconds.  And… It runs on that same battery as the drill too!  LOVE.

I added some D-Rings to the back of the finished art and hung it up!  Make sure to add an anchor in the wall if you can’t attach to a stud.

Here are a few more pics!

Wall Art DIY with Wood Shims

DIY Wall Art from Wood Shims

Wood Wall Art DIY

Hope you LOVE it as much as I do!  I would love for you to share and PIN this baby below!

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Let me know if you have any questions at all!

~Whitney

Ashley and Whitney Blog post signature

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

39 Comments

  1. Would love to make an entry table top out of this with glass on top! Will have to get to get to work on that! Thanks for the inspiration! Love your blog!

  2. Can you tell me how thick your plywood is? My husband thinks the nails would go through the back.

    1. She said it shoots up to two inch brad nails, but that plywood would probably be at least 1/2” if not 3/4” thick, because you want to make sure it lays flat. Thinner plywood can warp. So, I’m sure it’s thicker plywood and shorter brad nails.

  3. Trying this now and having some difficulties since the directions were so vague. First, for the people who mentioned it, you really can’t do this without all the power tools. My qualms – I don’t understand why there is a center line when the staggered pattern doesn’t really call for lining anything up against it. The most important thing is to keep a 45 degree angle to keep things centered. I measured a guide for that first and built off of it. Using cheap materials… shims, plywood and furring strips, you are frequently going to run into bent pieces. I am finding this project to be a lot of trouble.

  4. almost finished framing this bad boy! what a blast we had doing this project! Thank you so much for an epic tutorial 🙂

  5. OHMYGOODNESS! okay, I saw your post on Friday… and I couldn’t wait to try my hand at it. My boyfriend even joined me for this weekend project- it was epic!
    Thank you so much for this amazing tutorial! I am really close to being done and I can’t wait to share photos of my finished product 🙂 woohoo!

    1. Did you figure out how to do it. I have the whole center part done and I can’t figure out how to add the trim? It just lifted right off =/

  6. I loved this piece as soon as I saw it, SO I decided to do my first Shanty2Chic project 🙂 It’s now proudly displayed in our living room.

  7. Hi! I love this project.. I just went to Lowes and bought everything.. but, the shims I bought are too short. These were the longest ones they had, and they’re almost 12″ long. I even tried Home Depot and they didn’t have anything longer.. What size are yours? Thanks!

  8. I picked up all the lumber to do this project today, however, I ran into a snag when my shims weren’t near long enough to span the width of the 2′ x 4′ piece of ply. The shims were from Lowes and look identical to the ones in your picture and run about 11 3/4″ long. So, I am assuming yours are a bit longer. I guess I’ll try narrowing up the ply to even things out.

    1. So sorry Justin! Mine were the longer shims and I should have made that more clear. I thought that was the right photo of the shims but I may have taken the wrong one. Thanks and sorry!

  9. I love this!!! I think I will change it up a bit and put the word “HOME” down it and change the O to a heart and use the burlap flowers. Its a chilly rainy day, a good day to fire up the power tools:))

    1. I was thinking of putting something down the center, too! Love your idea! I really think this is one I might could do!!

  10. I’ve seen some cool stuff done with shims before, but this is truly AWESOME! Love it – very creative! I’m putting this on my to-do list for sure. 🙂

  11. Whitney,

    I am wondering, can you also just glue the shims down to the plywood with wood glue, do you have to nail them down. I don’t have a nail gun and would like to make this. I have priced them and just don’t have the money for one right now. If it won’t work with just using wood glue, I can wait till I have the money for the brad nail gun I suppose. I would rather have it come out right by waiting if that is necessary.

    Please let me know

    Thanks,

    Erin aka nanasrcool

    1. I am sure you can! Just make sure to have something rest on it while it dries or even tape them in place! I am sure it would work fine with the lightweight!

  12. I flipping love it too! I love that it’s another AirStrike project even more… I think I’ve used mine every day since you first posted about it and I RAN to HD to buy one. I adore it just as much as you do… and I just opened up my little corner sander today so it’s perfect timing! Now to hit HD for some of those shims… wonder if I could work out a chevron pattern HMMM 😀

    1. A chevron pattern with the ply landscape would look awesome. You could even stain them two different colours (light & dark) or coloured gel stain…. I want to try it too!!! I just wish we could get the shims over here!

  13. Sweet! Nice job and great tutorial!

    Thank you for sharing, you have given me an idea for how to handle a blank wall that needed a touch of rustic modern-ness in our home. 🙂