Map Wall Art

My parents emigrated from Vietnam nearly 40 yrs ago, and I'm a first generation child, but you'd never know it from the decor in my house.  I don't have any chinoiserie in my home - no lacquered mother of pearl triptychs, foo dogs, or lotus or ginko blossoms.  I love all things chinoiserie, especially the imperial trellis pattern that's been all over the decor mags and blogs, but haven't wanted to go there in my own decor.  Part of the problem is that I've never wanted my decor to veer towards kitsch, which is an easy thing to do with some asian home decor.  All this is the long way of saying, I've put a touch of Asia in my decor without going the foo dog route, not that there's anything wrong with them(kindof cute actually.)

I had been thinking about my roots a bit lately.  Answering the questions to accept the Versatile Blogger Award, led me to say that the place I'd most like to travel to is Vietnam.  And when I think of travel, I think of maps.  We've been seeing a lot of maps in decor.  Shelterpop posted about Map-Inspired Home Decor last fall and featured this fantastic map of Venice in simple black frames from Spicher & Co which sells for $1010.

Becky at Infarrantly Creative featured this fantastic world map made by Selina at Creative Juices Decor last week.  Her mod-podged canvas version cost less than $35.

I used these as inspiration, but put my own spin on things.  I love gallery walls, and wanted my map art to have that same semi-haphazard feel to it.

I started with an image of a map.  If you start out with an acual map, you can go directly to cutting it up, by using the cardboard backing as a size template and frame it up. 

I pulled the imageof the map up in my editing software and adjusted it's size to a 25" width.  With the spacing between the frames and the width of the frames themselves, the final project was closer to 33".   I then fixed my selection tool as a rectangle 612x792 pixels big.  My image display is at 72 pixels per inch and multiplying that out for an 8.5x11 frame is how I came up with the rectangle size.  I cut out these rectangles and pasted them into their own new files and printed them out.

I framed each of the pieces of the map with some dollar store certificate frames.  No trimming of the photos is necessary because the certificate frames are paper sized.  I hung these with 3M Command Adhesive velcro strips.  I love these fasteners, mostly because I hate patching walls.

Here's the before

and the after.  I love my new Map Wall Art!

Oh, and the final tally:

Dollar Store frames - $9

3M Command Adhesive - $4

Total - $13

Thanks for popping in and decorating with me.  I'm linking this up to Between Naps on the Porch's Metamorphosis Monday, and A Soft Place to Land's Map Party.



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