Track Your Summer Memories With This Wooden Engraved Map
With Labor Day over, it’s sad but safe to say that summer is coming to an end and fall is approaching. Instead of sulking inside with your favorite bathing suit on and your heater at 90 degrees — grab all of your ticket stubs and paper memories to help create a wood engraved map tracking all the places you’ve been. Create this map of the places you visited in summer 2016 or as a running total of all the states you have vacationed in so far. As you can see, I did the latter — that would be a crazy amount of vacation days for me to visit all those states in three months ;)
Materials:
Tools:
Instructions:
- wood
- map stencil
- glitter
- patterned paper
- paint pens
- wooden engraver
- scissors
- tape
- paint brushes
Print out a stencil of the United States to fit the size of your wooden board. Cut out, tape together and then tape the paper down to the center of the wooden board.
- Print out the map stencil to fit on your piece of wood.
- Cut out and tape onto the board. Use the wood burner to outline the shape of the United States.
- Remove the paper stencil and cut out all the states that you have visited.
- Time to jazz up those states in which you have created memories. Use pattern paper, glitter, paint pens, etc. to deck out each state.
- Use Mod Podge to paste the states to their appropriate spaces on the map.
- Once the Mod Podge has dried, place the remaining state stencil on top of the map and use the wood burner to trace over the lines.
- Remove the paper and darken the state lines to make your map pop.
Use a wood burning tool to trace the outer edge of your paper stencil. Remove the stencil and darken the tracing if necessary. Don’t have a wood burner? No problem! We have three awesome kits that come with a wood burner, plus awesome wood pieces to practice engraving.
Time to start racking your brain for all the states you have visited. Cut those states out of your paper stencil and decorate them! Grab fancy papers (maybe this is an old ticket from a museum or a really awesome gift bag from a boutique), glitter or paint pens to make each state its own.
Use Mod Podge to paste your states onto your wooden map in their correct location. Test your knowledge and puzzle skills, but then when it gets too hard, look back at the print out above ;)
Once the Mod Podge has dried, place the original cutout of the states on top of the wooden map. Use the wood burner to trace over the state lines.
Almost done! Remove the paper stencil and use the wood burner to darken the state lines.
Step back and relive the memories in the states you have visited while also making plans in your head for the states that you need to visit next. As you can see, I haven’t visited much of the midwest. Anyone have a couch out there that I can crash on?
Have you noticed this amazing wallpaper that we used to style with? I’m obsessed with it :) Our friends over at Hovia Wallpaper make custom wallpaper in any pattern and dimension that you can dream of! We received a whole bunch of watercolored wallpapers and can’t wait to use them to style scenes :)
