DIY Cartography Heart Set

OMG. My first DIY! I wanted to get the happy couple something special for their wedding gift as they are pretty important to me. They have lived together for a while now, so they certainly didn’t need any toasters or punch bowls, so I was on the hunt for something original. I had seen similar cartography sets around online, but most of them were selling for more than I wanted to spend. Then it dawned on me how easy it would be to make one myself, and how much more it would mean being handmade…

1. Before you get started - You will need the following:

• Picture frames - either one for each heart or one large enough to hold multiple hearts. I chose to have quite large hearts so I got one for each. I think plain white frames are the best for this DIY, but play around with different styles, you might find something you like better!
• Maps of important or significant places - vintage maps are lovely if you can find them, but I just used regular street maps as it was easier and much cheaper! I had to get one map from overseas and snagged it on ebay for fairly cheap.
• Scissors, glue or sticky tape, and a light coloured pencil.
• A heart shaped template.
• ~ White backing paper.

2. Locate the part of the map that is significant and line up and trace your heart around the chosen area. Don’t press too hard or else your lines will show up later.
3. My template was actually a clothing tag from a dress I bought. I’m not great at drawing nicely shaped hearts, but if you are all you need to do is draw and cut one out to use as a template. Remember that the heart needs to be big enough to cover the chosen area of the map.
4. Carefully cut out each of your map hearts, ensuring all the edges are smooth and neat and no pencil marks are obvious.  I chose to have maps of where the groom proposed (Las Vegas), where the wedding was being held and where the couple live (their first home together).
5. Lay out your backing paper (and cut to size if need be) and lay out your hearts how you would like them to display. At this point I decided I wanted to label the three locations - ‘The Proposal, The Big Day’ and ‘Happily Ever After’. I then proceeded to spend the better half of an hour re-writing these three phrases over and over again until I decided on the one in which I hated my hand writing the least.
6. Glue down all the pieces and put into your frames, and VOILA! You have just made a lovely and sentimental gift for loved ones or even for your own home :)

So there you have it, a super easy DIY that looks as lovely as it’s more expensive counterparts, that wont break the bank. Plus, I had so much fun sourcing all the parts and putting this together!

P.S. I spoke to the groom a couple of days after the wedding and the loved it :)