Map Frames!

One of the Pinterest projects I pinned was a map wall with various frames that the crafter had spray painted:

I was pretty dang excited because one of my favorite souvenirs to bring home from my travels are MAPS. I travel low-budget backpacker style which means a lot of the memorabilia I bring home is stuff I can get for free or very cheap, like tickets and postcards. Maps are fantastic because they are available for free and they are totally useful.

So I have all these crinkly maps hoarded in my "souvenir bags." I have used them as decor in the past in temporary dorm type situations, taping or tacking them to the wall. I was looking for something a bit cooler and more adult to do with them.

First I grabbed a bunch of my maps and measured them. I seriously have lots of maps. Then I was off to Michael's looking for the cheapest way to do my project. I got 3 of their $1 frames, and a couple of larger plastic frames for pretty cheap on sale. I ended up getting Martha Stewart paint in several bright colors that promised to work on various materials, and a primer.

I painted in the hot Arizona sun on the patio, so the stuff dried like instantaneously. I did two coats of the white primer and two or more coats of color. I wasn't sure how to was going to turn out, but the frames ended up looking like wooden painted frames, I'd say. My version of this project is like the uber cheap, utterly untalented, very quick version of this craft. 

Here they are on my wall! I ended up using a map of Sydney, Australia, a map of the island of Bali, a map of Lembongan Island in Bali, a metro map from Taipei, and a little map of Southeast Asia that was part of another larger map. 

Yes, this is my wall, which includes the Snow White poster that has been there since I was born to my own decorations from my travel, which I've been trying to organize. The cool thing about this project is I already have more maps, and can definitely get more in my travels. So I can always add to it. And when I move out of my house (hopefully before I'm 40), I can take this with me as some more adult art to decorate with rather than tacking up posters- like I did with the other Sydney map on my wall.

I have a really cool map from Yangshuo, China- a hand-drawn style with lots of fun facts on it. It is much larger than these maps but I'd really love to add it to the collection.

I want to do some other travel/Pinterest-inspired crafts. The next one on my list is to do something with my foreign coin collection. I am thinking about making magnets out of them, but I will have to wait until my paychecks start rolling in again.