Made: vintage map artwork

I'm obsessed with maps and with all things personalised, so when my friends Cara and Dan got married I wanted to make them a gift that combined the two.  To buy, a framed map artwork is mega-bucks, but I knew it would be easy to make myself... and so much more personal, too.

 

I spent months scouring the shops for suitable maps to make this and a similar gift for The Boy.  Charity shop bookshops are great sources of vintage maps from all eras, and I think the finished product looks much nicer if you combine different maps rather than having all the cut-outs sourced from the same map.  In the end, I lucked out with some old Ordnance Survey maps of Devon (where Cara and Dan got married), a London road map (featuring Crouch End, where they live), and a vintage map of Scotland (where they got engaged).

 

So, once you've chosen the maps, you need to make your heart cut-outs.  My heart hole punch came from eBay, and is my favourite new toy.  It made making the heart shapes a breeze - I just cut a square from the map, centred the place-name in the middle of the heart, and punched it out. 

 

I used some heavy duty craft card with a nice textured finish - from Paperchase - to mount the heart shapes.  I'd recommend using Spraymount to affix them to the card, as it allows you to reposition until you're happy with how they're all lined up. 

I put the finished picture into an Ikea frame and et voila!  One completely personalised yet completely bargain wedding present.