Anniversary Gift: Special Place In My Heart Maps

 I'm linking up to Tatertots and Jello's 2011 Favorites:

Last week, Dave and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary.  I knew I wanted to get him a special gift, but what would it be?  Neither one of us needs a thing.  Plus, stuff just feels like stuff sometimes.  Does that make sense?

Anyway, I headed to Pinterest for some ideas.  I came across this project from Full of Great Ideas:

I knew this would be a perfect gift for Dave, because he has always liked maps.

Funny side story...I remember the first time I saw him at my Dad's work picnic and the only thing I remember about him was his stupid looking map coat.  I can't describe it, but it was a jacket with a map on it.  LOL  This was back in the 90's.  Fast forward to the first time I go to his house and he has a clear map shower curtain in the bathroom.  TeeHee.

So, back to the gift.  I loved the Special Place In My Heart idea and decided to make my own:



This isn't the best picture, but no matter what I do, there is always a glare!

The hardest part was deciding on a frame.  I found this one at Michael's.  It was black and had a "Grandma" mat inside.  I spray painted it white and then got to work on my heart maps.

Stephanie at Full Of Great Ideas used an atlas for her maps, but I did not have one.  I also didn't really have the time to go find one, as I waited until the week of our anniversary to get started.

I ended up using Google maps (terrain) and printing them on cardstock.  I then used a heart template I had in my scrapbooking stuff.

Finding the proper color for the background was also difficult.  The blue of the water in the maps automatically ruled out tons of choices, because they just clashed.  I finally remembered I had a large light purple mat board from when I used to sell stuff on ebay.  I used it to lay my items on for pics.  The light purple wasn't my first choice, but it's the only color that worked.

Here's a close up:



I'm really happy with how it turned out and Dave loved it.  He knew right away what the special places were and thought it was really cool.

I also had the foresight to know that I would want to move this frame later.  I went ahead and printed the maps again and made another mat that I can frame vertically.

What do you think?  It was fun to  make, minus Abby stepping on the glass of the first frame and breaking it into tiny pieces.  I can't believe it, but her foot was just fine.  I cleaned up all of the glass and headed back to Michael's for another frame.  I went armed with an extra 25% off coupon for sale frames and it was only $9 something to replace it.  I do have another black frame now, just no glass.  LOL!

I'm linking this up to: