One of the blessings/curses of moving to a new and bigger place is having an abundance of blank wall space. If you’re like me, you want to fill it with color, color, and more color. Unfortunately, art is expensive. Fortunately, DIY is cheap and easy.
My first stop for art placement was above the bed. I wanted a few pieces to cover a large expanse (and match my bright bedspread). I fell in love with graphic city map concept a while ago. So I attempted to make my own for around $37.
Here’s how you can make them too…
What you’ll need:
- Three 16×20 canvasses
- Martha Stewart Crafts Patterning Tape
- Two colors of hardware store sample size paint (You could use craft paint or spray paint as well. Spray paint would be ideal, but, you know, I needed to make sure it matched the bedspread.)
Step 1: Choose my cities. I chose my hometown, my fiance’s hometown, and the town where we met. The next step was to break out Google Maps and settle upon a uniform distance that encompassed major, recognizable roads in all three towns.
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Step 2: Sketch out (with a ruler) the major roads on a sheet of letter paper. Depending on your eyeballing reliability, you can either guesstimate or grid the next step. Draw your map on the canvas (keeping in mind that it is roughly 4x the size of your paper).
Step 3: Time for tape! Use the smaller-width tape to go over minor roads and the larger-width tape to go over major roadways. In one city, I used two widths of the larger tape for an interstate. Be sure to continue the tape to the backsides of the canvas for easier peeling and pretty edges.
Step 4: Paint over the tape. If you’re using wall paint (like me) or craft paint, use a foam brush or blotter to go over the tape so as not to get bristles underneath. These methods also require two coats for 100% opacity. If you’re using spray paint, ignore all that tediousness and go nuts!
When all is dry, peel off the tape and gawk at your awesome, graphic artwork! If you feel like further personalizing your maps, mark a meaningful spot or two!
Oh man, this looks awesome. My boyfriend is a maps and roads geek so I think he would love it too!
Brilliant! I’ve always loved maps, and I’m moving soon. This might need to happen for the new place.
Doing this. Hashtag crafty weekend!
looks great!!
Would be much easier with American straight roads and planned cities rather than British twisty windy crazy roaded towns
What a neat idea. Also where is your bedding from? I love chevrons.
Not even my bed, but…
Target.
… I window shop the internet waaaay too much.
Yep! I kind of wish I was going to college again just so I could shop all of their new back to school bedding. But being an adult is way more fun.
Also, affordable chevron! Finally!
Awwww I’m in the UK and Target don’t ship internationally 🙁 Thanks anyway.
love this idea! both me and my significant other are have an academic background in geography it would be perfect for our bedroom!
This would be awesome with subway maps, too! And there are always bulletin boards at my local thrift shop to use instead of new canvases… *plotting *
I just realized this would be awesome if you did it with hiking/park trails too. but did you put the street names on it? or just figure it’s abstract-y art?