Map of Love

So I've been waiting ages to share this one with you all! I'm like a boy scout, my motto is 'Be prepared' and I've been saving this little Valentines lovely for over a month now.

Last year my Gran gifted me some little things she had laying about and one of them was a very old A-Z map of Newcastle, I couldn't bare to throw this away knowing I could make something out of  it some day.

So I decided to transform the map into something I could give to G for Valentines, since we met in Newcastle and live here the map had both of the addresses we've lived in together since we met. I've seen plenty of these lovely little map picture frames about but they all seemed to come without the personal touch I wanted and with a hefty price tag.

So I scoured the shops and ended up in my favourite place TK Maxx where I spotted a bargain in this picture frame and then I started making...

To get started you're gonna need: 

A picture frame of your choice of size, 

Cutting board, 

Map, 

Paper (to make the heart template), 

Scissors, 

Cutting knife or tool, 

Pencil, 

Brown paper (or a colour of your choice),

First of all take the back of the picture frame and decide how big you wanted the map section to be. Measured this into a square piece of paper and then cut a heart shape out of this so you have the exact shape you need.

Then got a hold of your brown paper, cut it to the same size as the backing of the picture frame and positioned the heart shape where you want the map section to be. Then cut the heart shape out of the brown paper and get your chosen map ready for the final steps.

 

Pick the section of map you want to display and line up your heart so you have everything you want in that section. Next you're going to want to cut around that heart so that you have maybe an inch around the edges, (I chose to just cut out a square and just made sure I knew my heart shaped section which I wanted to show.) 

Last but not least take your brown paper and line your map in the place you want it, then carefully tape around the back of you brown paper to secure your map in place. 

The final thing you want to do is mark your special places and locations, I just used a red sharpie to draw little heart shapes (Valentines!) around the places significant to us and popped the whole thing back into it's frame. 

G loved this present and of course I bought/made him some more little Valentines treats including the Ladybug sugar cookies and a heart shaped Victoria sponge (his very favourite flavour!) from last week. 

I hope you liked this new creation and someone in your life might just receive one of these as a present soon! Please do share your own versions of this frame if you make one. 

Katy x

Hope you all had an absolutely lovely Valentines day. I was treated by my lovely G to a vintage mint green milk glass cake stand, keep an eye out for it in my posts very soon!