Map Decor

Do you know someone who likes to travel? I do! I made this map decor for my parents who will soon cross off their “bucket list” the feat of visiting every state in the United States. I had a nice geography lesson in the process!

Here are a few tricks I used that you may find helpful.

• I chose my state colors and filled them in with color on my work page in Studio to make sure I had a nice distribution, which also made it easy to make sure I cut all 50 states in the right color.

• I sketched out all the states’ outlines with a pencil in my adjustable pen holder, although I’ve decided a black sketch pen would work just as well. This helps when putting the pieces in place before and during gluing, like a puzzle.

• I sketched and cut my map on a neutral color of cardstock for the background in two pieces so I could make it large enough for an 11” x 14” frame. If you look carefully at the photo above, you can see the seam that runs through Arizona, Utah, Nevada, etc. That seam gets covered by the colorful states. (You don’t need to divide anything.  Just place it on your work page with one edge of the design hanging off in no-man’s land, and the second time—or make a duplicate on the same page—just make sure that area plus a little overlap area is on the work page. The blade will simply lift up at the work space’s borders and will not cut that outside area.) See below.

• I used regular white Elmer’s glue and a foam brush to glue the thin roll of cork board to a backing of chipboard, and used white glue again to adhere the full sketched background layer of the United States to the cork board. The cork did not want to stick to other adhesives I tried.

• I made tiny print and cut labels for my map tacks with white sticker paper so the flag would fold over on itself and stick easily with no additional glue. (These are 3/16” tall and 3/4” wide when folded.)  I love this detail!

• Finally, I found the Pick Me Up Tool to be very helpful in grabbing those states one at a time to add glue. And it would have been hard to place all those islands of Hawaii without it!

I know my parents are going to love this! Now I need to make another one that marks their travels across the world. 😉 I hope you can use this idea to help document the places you or your gift recipient have been!

Shapes/Fonts Used:

• USA Map #26338
• LD Charming Bold #14116

This project was originally featured on the Silhouette America Blog on 7/24/14.

This post contains affiliate links. It won’t change your price, but it helps you by getting exactly the product I used, and it helps me by giving me a little kickback to help support this blog. Win-win. 🙂

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