Print Your Own Map & Mark Your Travels

Happy Tuesday! Over the weekend, I decided to make something that documented our travels. Adam and I have done quite a bit of traveling over the last several years, mostly from being in the military, and I wanted someway to remember all of the fun places we've been! I didn't want to spend a lot of money, so I did my best to only use things I already had.

What I used:
-scrapbook frame, or any frame that has space between the backing and the glass
-a map of any kind, I printed mine--here is the link.
-a piece of scrapbook paper, or anything else you'd like, to go behind your map
-scissors
-push pins that fit into your frame
-pen (if you want to mark roadtrips)
-something to put behind the map to raise it-- I totally recommend using some foam board, I didn't have any and was about to throw my project out the window-- this is so you can push the pins in and they will stay put
-glue
-an atlas that has better markings than your printed map, if you need it for reference

I accidentally printed a map that was too large for my frame. This ended up being a good thing because I was able to mark out the road trips and all the places I needed to pin. 

You'll notice that my pins are longer in the above picture than my finished project pictures. That's because my pins ended up being too long to fit into the frame. I should have checked beforehand, but I didn't. This is around the time I almost chucked it out the window. How did I fix the problem? I cut every.single.pin. Yep. I also dipped the pin in some tacky glue before placing it back in the pre poked holes, just to keep it in place--because I was too cheap to buy some foam board.

So, 10 hours (kidding...maybe 1 hour) and several poked fingers later, I had something that looked like this.

I forgot to mention that I color coded my pins. The white ones are places we've lived, the blue are places Adam has been, yellow is where I've been, and green is where both of us have been together. It was a lot of fun thinking back on all of those trips we've made, especially the long road trips. When you've done a few of the same road trip, your memories start to run together, so it was good to sit down and really think about it.

Adam said he wants a world map next. Hah. We will see. My fingers need some time to heal.

Let us know if you've ever made your own push pin type maps. Did you get frustrated like me?

Hope you guys enjoyed this post and that you have a great day!

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