Pinterest Challenge!

So, one of my favorite blogs, Young House Love, does a Pinterest Challenge where they urge people to stop pinning and start actually doing what they've been pinning!  I hopped on board with my own Pinterest Challenge and actually completed a DIY project!  

I started with my Pinterest inspiration image:

From HERE

I'm sure you've seen similar "state art" images floating around the web.  I thought they were cute and decided to make my own version of one for my parents as a Christmas gift.  I wanted to include the four places we have lived as a family: Michigan, Tennessee, Mexico, and Dubai.  Hopefully this will give you an easy, step-by-step tutorial of how to do one for yourself!

Step 1: Search google for geographically correct state/country outline images.  Once I got these I printed them out and made sure they were about the same size on the paper (I didn't care if the sizes were geographically correct in comparison to each other)

Step 2: Copy these images onto cardstock in REFLECTION mode, meaning copy them backwards (this avoids seeing the lines after you imperfectly cut them out).  Many copiers have this setting.  I used the copiers at FedEx Office:

Step 3: Cut them out.  This was easily the worst part of the project.  For the record, Michigan is NOT an easy state to cut out!  This is how I felt while doing it:

After cutting them out (my hands/fingers were SORE), they looked like this:

Step 4: Cut out the background of the frame.  I used simple posterboard for this (yay for inexpensive projects!):

Step 5: Place the states/countries on the background.  Be careful when spacing them because you don't want the frame to cover them and you want to leave room for the lettering at the bottom:

Step 6: Place heart stickers on the specific cities you lived.  This can obviously be done before Step 5:

Step 7: Glue them down.  Obviously make sure that's where you REALLY want them!
Step 8: Add lettering at the bottom if you want.  I used 3D foam sticky letters from Michaels.  It gave the lettering a nice pop and made the letters not look flat and boring:

I just eyeballed the lettering at the bottom.  I didn't want it to look TOO perfect (umm...check):

Anyway, that's the final product!  I think it turned out really cute and my parents loved it.  All of the supplies including the frame and copying came out to less than $40.  If you can find a super inexpensive frame it would be even cheaper.  Hope this was helpful!