This week I wanted to try a cute pin I found a while ago on Pinterest, of a map made out of scrapbook paper for each state. [Edit for update – unfortunately I can no longer find the original pin on Pinterest, so this post doesn’t make as much sense, but you’ll get the idea!]

We travel a lot (or so I thought, until I made this haha), so I thought it would be really cute.  We also just moved into our house in December, so we still have a lot of empty wall space to decorate.  I thought this cute little handmade map would be unique and a great way to personalize a room.

I followed the original instructions with just a few changes.  Here are my materials:

• 16×20 canvas from Hobby Lobby (I got one there pretty cheap)
• A bunch of cute scrapbook paper, if you’re like me you always have some lying around!
• A handful of miscellaneous cute small buttons, you can use all matching ones or a hodge podge
• Paint for the canvas,
• A pack of wooden letters, also from Hobby Lobby
• Modge Podge, or another similar clear adhesive glue or spray
• Scissors
• Print out of a US map (link below)
• A lot of patience and time (to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it right)

I knew it would take me a good while to cut out all these states (curse you, New England).  One weekend when the husband was out of town, I had yet another TV marathon (I think this time it was Fringe) cutting out all of the states.

I started by printing out a blown-up map of the US here. I printed to poster size, so the states would be big enough to fit on my rather large canvas. Play with your printer settings to get it the right size for whatever canvas you’ve chosen.

Then, I cut out each state from the map itself (that took forever).  Next, I rotated through all my scrapbook papers and traced each state on them using my state cutouts.  Since I didn’t have as many papers as I did states, I just made sure to keep all the patterns spread out (does that make sense?). I didn’t want the same paper to be used for two states that bordered each other. Then, I cut out the states on the scrapbook paper.

I painted my canvas blue.  You can see in the original tutorial she uses a more neutral beigey color, but I love bright blue and I thought it’d look ocean-y.  After it dried, I glued on my states as precisely as I could.  I then modge podged over the entire map to give it a nice glossy look and hold down any curling ends of the paper. I used the glue adhesive, but I think spray would be good too.

I debated adding any words or a title to my map.  I didn’t really want “Oh the places you’ll go”, which is a Dr. Suess quote the original tutorial uses.  We don’t have any kids yet so I just wasn’t feeling the Seuss.  I decided on “Wanderlust”.  I painted the letters a bright green and glued them on my canvas.

The finishing touch was gluing my little buttons on the map for the places we’d visited.  My husband and I agreed on some ground rules.  I could only “button” places we had both visited together, and we had to have stayed overnight there (not just driven through). Only one button per state, even if we’ve been to multiple cities, and I put a heart button for the two cities we’ve lived in — Baton Rouge and Houston.

And that conclues this week’s Pinterest Thursday!

Do you want to participate in Pinterest Thursday?  Feel free to join me and link up at bythebookpaper!