DIY Antique-Style Map

www.clickphotography.ca

Here's a little peek into our nursery!  When we found out we were having a baby, I think I was most excited about decorating the room.  I loved the challenge of creating a calm but colourful and gender neutral space.  Since we love to travel, we knew that we wanted to include a world map in the room.  We also wanted an animal theme, since Bryce has quite the collection of animal figurines.  When I found this graphic on Etsy, I knew it was perfect.  (Thanks Decorart Design!)

At first, we planned to print it as a poster.  But I wanted it to be pretty big, which can get pricey.  Plus, we would need to find a way to frame it, which adds up as well.  The more I thought about it, the more I wished it would be fabric so that it would look similar to an antique style map.  I remembered this project, where I turned a tea towel into art and I thought we could do something similar.

So, I discovered Spoonflower.com where you can upload a graphic and custom design your own fabric.  Sold!  It took a bit of figuring to order the design, so here's a screenshot of the Spoonflower order to help you out:

The finished size is 24" x 36", which was perfect for above our crib.  And $15.75 was totally reasonable, I thought!  Of course, that's USD so us Canadians have to include the exchange and taxes and shipping (ugh...).  But still, our grand total for this piece of fabric was $26.53.  Not terrible for a nice piece of art.

I was really happy with the quality and the design when it came.  First, I trimmed the edges and ironed and hemmed them as straight as I could.  Since the map is a blue background it was easy to see the edge of the graphic on the white fabric - straight lines :)

We also bought the wood from Home Depot and had it cut on site.  I think we made each piece 40", so we could have 2 extra inches on each side for hanging.  We stained them with some leftover stain from another project.

Line it up and hot glue away!  Here's the back:

We just measured and tied a piece of twine and voila!  A super easy DIY Map.

How stunning are these photos by Christine from Click Photography (the first and last photo)!  She is AMAZE!  If you're in KW and the surrounding area - look her up!