Blog Hop: 5/20-22 Vacation Blog Hop, Day 1

WELCOME!
Thank you for joining us on our Vacation Blog Hop.

I love to travel. I think that comes from my parents who were brave enough to leave their native country and give the U.S. a try.  We always traveled when I was a child and I continue to have the travel bug. It has taken some time to get my kids and husband into the swing of traveling but they love it too. I can't wait to travel and see more of the world with my little family.

I am very excited for this blog hop because it was a reason to FINALLY work on a project that my husband and I have  been thinking about for years. As far back as I can remember, my DH has wanted a map of the world and the U.S. in our home where we could mark off all the places we have traveled to and keep a visual list of where we want to go next. This was the perfect opportunity to get this done.  I learned some new crafting techniques and I certainly learned how NOT to make a map cork board :) Here is how it came out:

I am excited about this wall for a number of reasons. I made almost all the pieces myself and all in all it came to about 150 dollars for EVERYTHING.  I could not have done this without Amazon prime and Hobby Lobby.  Below you will see a list of products that I purchased through Amazon to get this wall done.

There are many elements to the whole wall including the world map, the US map, a printer try designed to have a list of the places we want to go, a place to put pictures of past trips, my first try at vinyl and 14x14 inch frames that have a magnetic board behind it. 

This is one of my favorite pieces here. I had bought a printer tray a while back and I was just looking for an excuse to use it.  This is the tray I worked with below.  I created little cards to go into each of the 12 spaces. I added little pieces of paper that had the names of the places we wanted to go someday.

I have wanted to do a map like this for quite a long time. I had even bought my husband a map years ago that we lugged from apartment to apartment to house that we never framed for this purpose. It is now sort of beat up!  I decided to tackle it myself.   I found this U.S. poster Decorator World Wall Map - Laminatedon Amazon and you see that right, it cost around 2 dollars.  I bought the cork roll as well from Amazon and the 24x36" frame 50% from Hobby Lobby.

To create the cork map, I did the following:

I actually ended up using spray adhesive & double sided tape for adhering the cork and the map together. I removed the glass from the frame (and broke it freaking everywhere, what a mess!), took the cardboard backing and used double sided tape to attach the cork to the cardboard. I originally used spray adhesive for this job and it did not work that well at all.  I think using liquid nails would also work for this step as well. After I was sure that the cork was adhered to the cork, I sprayed the cork & the back of the map and very carefully placed them together.  I might actually end up redoing the US map because it was the first one that I did and I don't think I used enough spray adhesive.

 My little helper worked with me to remove the tape cover so we could adhere it together.

 Here is how the world map came out:

We have a lot more filling out to do on this map :) We had SO much fun filling out the maps with the map pins.  We did different colors for who visited each place, whether we did it alone or as a family and marked red for the places we want to go to someday.  It was really fun to revisit the places we have gone in the past and for the kids to see and hear about our adventures.

The next element to the wall is the Magnetic Scrapbooking Frames.  I totally stole this idea from Jessica :) She had purchased some from Creative Memories and I love them. They magnetically hold up a 12x12 scrapbooking page and you can swap them out just by taking off the magnets. It makes it much easier than having to open the frame all the time and any 3D elements won't be squashed.  I once again found some awesome frames from Amazon. They were only 13 dollars each and they shipped VERY well.  Super packaged. 

I was hoping to find 14x14 inch tin but instead I found 12x12 inch stainless steel at Home Depot for 5 dollars. I used Liquid Nails to adhere the steel to the cardboard backing (once again getting rid of the glass but NOT breaking it this time). After that dried, I covered the whole thing with fabric I had laying around.  The magnets I have are super strong and can hold through the fabric and the paper.  It came together so quickly. I might have to make more of these.  I also created my own magnets by taking some cute brads, cutting off the splitter part and using E6000 to glue the magnets to the brad.

Here are how the frames look all put together:

I will be doing another post just on the page within the frame for the next post for this blog hop.
SO CHECK BACK!

For the rest of the wall, I found these super cute decorative items to represent my favorite place to travel: PARIS and this metal compass. For my finishing touch, I cut vinyl with my Cricut for the word travel and the flourishes!

So that is my travel wall! I hope it inspires us to keep up with our travels. I need something to scrapbook after all. I am currently in the process of scrapbooking our most recent trip to Puerto Rico. Please check out my posts about that.


Here are the list of items that I purchased from Amazon to accomplish my wall.
          


























We are very fortunate to have a sponsor for this hop. Betty from Simply Betty Stamps is offering up these fun stamps! So to qualify for these stamps you have to do the following:

1) If you are not a follower of my blog, please do so in the right hand column.
2) Leave a comment on my blog AND on every blog along the hop.
3) On Monday, 5/23 @ 10 AM CST, I will pick THREE winners and each will receive one of these fun stamps.

Thank you Betty for donating these stamps to our fun blog hop! She is also the last stop on our hop so be sure to check her out (and all the others as well!).

Thank you for checking out my post! There are MANY awesome stops along this Vacation Blog Hop. Your next stop is my awesome friend Jessica at http://thecreativestamperspot.blogspot.com/.

Here are the rest of the stops:
Nancy - http://blog.fancywithnancy.com/
Jessica- http://thecreativestamperspot.blogspot.com/
Jen R. http://memorieswithjen.blogspot.com/
Gill - http://scrappincreationsbygillm.blogspot.com/
Lisa - http://lisagarrow.blogspot.com/
Monica - http://scraps2treasure.blogspot.com/
Jill - http://Thescrapoholic.blogspot.com/
Jackie - http://jackiesscrappinpad.blogspot.com/
Nadia -  www.nadiasbeautifulmess.blogspot.com
Shannon - www.purplelionpaper.com/blog
Jenn P - http://jennscrap2.blogspot.com/
Betty - http://simplybettystamps.blogspot.com/