pinspiration project: nursery art.

even before i had planned to surprise meg at her shower a few weeks ago, i knew i was going to make (at least part of) my present to baby garner-ballard. since i have been helping meg with ideas for the nursery for months now, i thought it would be fitting that i made something for the nursery.

meg & i have been going back & forth on the art for her mostly gender-neutral nursery, but since she has loved all things map from the beginning, i knew she would adore this piece!

{original pinterest link: be curious.}

if you follow the original link, it takes you to a huge website compilation of prints & pictures. obviously there was no tutorial, so i had to create it.

one of the things i loved about this piece was the old school map that it was printed on. i searched high & low (from the comfort of my couch – thanks interwebs!) until i found the perfect map on etsy. this map was meant to be a “travel map” where you put pins every place you have travelled, but the size & colors were perfect.

i knew ahead of time that i would more than likely have to letter directly onto the map because i didn’t want to figure out how to try to print it onto the paper, but i didn’t know how until the map was in my hand. at first i attempted to draw out my own letters copying the pinspiration, but that ended up being frustrating & would have taken so long (me being a perfectionist & everything). so, i decided to blow up a copy of the pinspiration (i did a print screen, copied it into a Word document, & blew it up) to the size that i wanted the letters to be & then i printed the image in black & white.

{the print-out}

i cut out an 8 by 10 inch piece from the map choosing a similar layout of the pinspiration – the middle being the atlantic ocean & showing north & south america, europe & africa. once i had the cut out of my map & the print out of the letters, i figured tracing the letters would work the best. fortunately for me i have a glass-top desk, so i turned on my iPhone flashlight & traced the letters onto my map with a pencil.

after i had everything traced, i “colored in” the letters & flourishes. i happened to have a thick chisel tip whiteboard marker in black & a red sharpie – not ideal but they didn’t bleed & got the job done!

i picked up a white ribba frame from ikea which worked perfectly.

i hope that baby garner-ballard & his mom & dad love this little print as much as i do. i love the way this print turned out & i can’t wait to see it in the nursery!

what are your thoughts on making your own prints?

M