Friday, November 22, 2013

DIY travel map

DIY travel map
I love travel, I love maps, and I love keeping track of things, so it's no surprise that I've wanted a travel map for years. (Plus, Larry and I have a goal to visit all 50 states, and we're a tiny bit competitive about it.) It's lame that it took me so long to actually follow through with this project, though, especially since I searched and searched for years for an acceptable map and finally bought one in 2011. Yes, I've had this map rolled up in a tube for TWO YEARS. It's finally on the wall, though!

I wanted a map that was simple and modern and found this one on Amazon. It was $1.68 when I bought it two years ago. It's 24x36 and printed on a metallic silver paper. The map does have a few geographic inaccuracies, though. (Where are the Great Lakes? What happened to Michigan???) I'm not sure if this is because it was a $2 map or because it was printed in the U.K. (Evidently, Americans aren't the only ones who suck at geography!)
DIY travel map
I had initially wanted to hang the map in a public area in our house, because I think it's a good conversation piece, however, there just weren't any good spots in our living or dining room, so I decided to hang it in our bedroom. This worked out for the better because the metallic paper shows every fingerprint (I wore cotton framer's gloves while framing), and I think our visitors would think it was pretty snotty if we had a "Please don't touch" sign next to it in our living room.
DIY travel map
I really wanted the map to look like a frame-worthy piece of art, so I mounted it to adhesive-backed foam core and framed it in a walnut frame (without glass, obviously). I've seen maps mounted to corkboard using pushpins, but this looks wrinkly and sloppy to me, so mounting the map to foam core was important in achieving a smooth and professional appearance. Plus, the foam core works as a backer board for the map pins.

Orange pins | Places I've traveled
Blue pins | Places Larry's traveled
White pins | Places we've traveled together

(For the sake of clarity, I'm only putting one pin per state/country regardless of how many cities we've been to. I would like to get a larger U.S. map someday to pin all the cities we've visited.)
DIY travel map
DIY travel map
The map was a good reminder of how big the world is and how little of it I've seen. I haven't done anywhere near as much traveling as I'd like - I didn't grow up in a military family (or in a family that traveled anywhere besides New Jersey, really) and I've never had a job that sent me to any interesting places for business, so all of my traveling was for pleasure or school (I studied abroad twice). Larry, on the other hand, has done a lot of business travel and has been to some very interesting places in Asia and Europe, as well as a good amount of domestic travel. Of course, the best trips have been the ones we've taken together. We've done some amazing traveling together in the good ol' USA as well as a couple trips to the Caribbean, but we definitely need to add some white pins to international locations!
DIY travel map
DIY travel map
And while I wish we could stick pins all over South America, Asia, Australia, and Africa (some day?), I do feel very lucky that I've gotten to experience a (tiny) bit of the world outside of the United States. To put it in perspective, I recently heard that over 50% of Americans have never been outside the U.S.
DIY travel map
It's a big big world! Let's go!

10 comments:

Pickles and Dimes said...

I see that you have yet to visit Minnesota! Come visit, and we'll take you to some great breweries, and Jason and Larry can talk music. :)

Carla in Savannah said...

Love this map! It's really simple and complete at the same time!
I've got a scratchy world map, all the countries are in golden-brown and you scratch the ones you've visited. Mine it's still pretty brown but that'll change soon!
Regards from a spanish follower!!
Summer in Savannah

Irene Solmone said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Irene Solmone said...

Wow, I love your map. I had this idea once, with my mom, when I was about 10, but we couldn't manage to find a damn map that could go for this, so we just dropped it (I have to say, I didn't know amazon yet). SO, your map convinced me to try again, since I've always loved travel, especially outside my country. Thanks for this:) …I see you've been to Italy! I'm from Rome. Hope you enjoyed it!

Kasia z Lufcikblog said...

where did you buy pushpins?

Non and Matt said...

Have you got a link where to buy the map?

Thanks

Funnelcloud Rachel said...

Non and Matt - Yup - it's linked in the blog post.

Non and Matt said...

It's no longer in stock :-(

Funnelcloud Rachel said...

Non and Matt - Looks like you might be able to get it at Staples: http://m.staples.com/Pyramid-America-World-Map-Contemporary-Poster/product_1060210

Non and Matt said...

I've found and ordered on on eBay. Hope it looks as good as yours when completed, thanks for the idea!