Our Family Map

I finally finished the last touch to the basement this week.  We decided we wanted to have a family map documenting all the places we have and will go as a family and couple.  I searched and searched for the perfect map and ended up falling in love with an artist in Australia.  She customized our map and made sure it was quite accurate with labels as well.

 I ordered the digital map from Blursbyaishop.  Then I had it printed through on online poster company called Posterprintfactory.com.

 My next step was to modge podge the poster to the 40" x 30" canvas.  This was a little stressful to make sure that I didn't get any bubbles.  I found some great tips here:  http://beachbrights.blogspot.com/2011/01/diy-artwork-turn-poster-into-canvas.html  I decided it was more of a two person job so my sister, Emily helped me make with this step.

The final step was to add texture to the modge podge to give it more of a real canvas look.  This idea came from here:  http://www.allthingsthrifty.com/2014/06/diy-art-canvas-with-real-texture.html

Next my super awesome sister-in-law Annie did some vinyl lettering for me to hang on the wall.  I found the idea online and then remade it (is that called copying?).  After hanging the map we decided that it would look good to split the lettering and put it above and below the map.  

We all LOVE the way the map turned out and now we are still trying to decide how to add "markers" to where we have been.  Now I'm itchin' to go somewhere!!!