In order to keep from getting too far behind, here comes Map Project #2 - Highlighting the Good Ole US of A and Cally's travels to places in the Eastern half of the country, (as of the time when I made this.)
Since I had two big laminated maps, one of the USA and one of the World, I had to choose one to cut into squares, as we saw in the first project, the Map Mosaic, and one that would highlight Cally's travels using images from various trips.
Cally had traveled some parts of Europe at the time, but because the countries on the World Map are so small, that map didn't work for the kind of picture project I wanted to do, so I chose the map of the USA. Plus, I had the photos from her USA travels at my disposal, and since this was a surprise, I needed to gather the pictures in stealth mode as much as possible.
A canvas (they can be pricey so check for sales and store coupons. I got mine for 50% off!)
A map (I used a laminated one)
Spray adhesive
Resized images from your travels (preferably printed at a photo center.)
None of the canvases I found were the same size as the the map, but it so happened that the bordered area of this map fit pretty well within one of the available sizes, so all that was needed was to cut the map along those lines. The excess would have detracted anyway.
When working with spray adhesive, be prepared to align the map carefully and work out any bubbles that form. Some stretching may occur and you will likely need to trim edges.
The time consuming part of this project is the effort you'll spend scouring your photo albums and computer files for full-length images. Full-length is preferable, as far as I was concerned because they appear more grounded, instead of looking like heads and partial bodies floating aimlessly across the country or the water. I like to get in close when I take pictures, so it wasn't easy for me to come up with distant images that included whole bodies. I did the best I could with as many as I could.
Luckily for me, tedious cutting tasks are right up my alley, especially when it comes to pictures. I found it fun to reminisce as I worked with the photos, and it was satisfying...especially when the project came together.
Ta da! Little people everywhere!
With some double-sided tape cut into eensy weensy pieces, the images were secured onto the map. Tweezers came in very handy.
After all that, do you think I ever got a good shot of the map on a wall anywhere? Here it is (in part) adorning another of Cally's living spaces. The shot of it on the loft wall had glare across it, so I didn't want to use that one. I was not intending this as any sort of blog post at the time, hence I didn't think to take appropriate images. I hope you get the idea.
Remember that ink jet images generally fade, and often quite quickly, especially in rooms with a lot of light. So for this type of project, it really does work best to take your images on a cd in jpg format (or another picture format) to a photo center for printing.
There you have it. We can also add images to our map as time goes on and as Cally continues to travel and keep a growing pictorial history. Sweet!
I hope you go on now and have some fun with maps yourself!
I'll be sharing this project at:
