A World Map Cork Board

a.k.a. - My Very Belated Wedding Gift to Eric

Traveling has always been something Eric and I love to do together - I guess you could say it is one of our passions. We love to reminisce about our previous adventures and dream about those that await us. Going off of this theme, I got Eric a world map and map pins as a wedding gift. I included a note saying how I wanted to spend the rest of my life making memories with him, and describing how we can use the map to document our past and plan out our future together, and teach our future kiddos about geography, etc. (I know what you're thinking ...   :)  kinda corny, but I guess that's how I roll)!

Anyway, we had yet to actually mount the map (well we really didn't have a place to put it until we finished the basement). If you remember, our basement was looking pretty complete, but there was one naked spot... above the mantle.

The perfect spot for our map! We just needed a way to mount it. We wanted to be able to add new pins for our future travels, so we figured a cork board would be perfect. We found one large enough at Michaels and used a 50% off coupon, so it ended up being less than $15. I had to trim the boarder of the map so that it would fit, but I think this also gave it a nice natural transition onto the bare cork. (Please don't mind my weird outfit - I had just got back from a run and was feeling motivated.)

The next big question was how to adhere the map onto the cork. We thought about using pins in the corners to hold it down, but we wanted something more permanent and wrinkle-free. That brought us into the glue aisle at Michaels. We ended up going with a 3M spray adhesive which claims to work on a wide variety of materials. 

We waited for a nice day so we could do the spraying outside (since we knew the fumes would be pretty bad from this stuff ... plus we didn't want any over-spray adhesive anywhere in the house). We marked on the cork where we wanted the corners of the map to go. We applied the spray with slow even coverage on the back of the map and then stretched it taut and, starting with one edge lined up on the marks, pressed the map onto the cork. That's really all it took. The spray worked great and dried really quickly. 

Then we added pins to show our previous travels (Gizmo helped)!

It turned out to be a quite good fit!! I really like that you can't see the pins until you get really close. 

We didn't even bother mounting it to the brick after we realized that it sit nicely on the mantle. (Oh, and you'll also notice in the photo below the new fireplace tools we found at Goodwill for $3.99 - LOVE!!)

So there ya have it. My wedding present to Eric is finally finished!! At least I got it done before our anniversary (barely)!! I can't believe I've almost been married for almost a year. It feels both like a very long time and no time at all. I guess I need to figure out a 1st anniversary gift pronto - I've only got about 2 weeks!!