How To Make a Travel Pinboard

Today I'm sharing with you how I made our travel pinboard!

This is a fun DIY project I recently completed which has really completed our living room. There was one small wall I really felt was missing something and this is what it was! This was a very easy project to complete and can be very cost efficient if you don't splurge on a map like I did. I wanted mine to be a muted color and couldn't find a map I liked until I found one on Easy, but we'll get into that in a little bit.

Once I decided I wanted to do this project I took a trip to our local A.C. Moore.

I picked up a 24x36 poster frame that had a small piece of plastic as a cover on the front of it. I simply pulled the plastic off (despite the warnings not to) and was left with a simple black frame.  I ended up getting a 50% off deal on this frame and only paid $15 for it.

I also bought a roll of cork for just over $9 and used my hot glue gun to glue attach it to the backing of the frame.  I did try to flatten out the roll ahead of time but was slightly impatient and ended up gluing it before it was completely flat.

Once I was done gluing onto the cardboard backing I laid it all out on the floor and weighed down the edges while I went to bed. 

The next morning I was up bright and early to get to the post office to pick up my map! I checked on my new cork board and glued down the edges that were still a little loose but felt it had flattened out quite nicely.

I did spend some time just trimming the edges with scissors so the cork fit correctly on the cardboard. It had been a little over when I first glued everything down so I made sure everything looked even before the next step.

I had bought mod podge and a small brush (under $7 combined) in order to attach the poster to the cork and had heard that it was a bit difficult to get posters to stick to cork so I knew I was in for a challenge.

I used some random items to help flatten out the map for a bit and quickly got impatient and wanted to get started! The map itself was something I found on Etsy and was a bit pricer then I initially planned. I fell in love with the gray and loved that you could customize the title. If you are looking to purchase one you can find them here.

I chose "Our Travels" as our title since that is what I plan to keep track of on this map.

Now I've already mentioned my impatience twice in this post welllll I think it made my end result a little crinkly. Anddd if you look real close you can tell that in the mod podge there's a little dirt (which why did I think it was a good idea to do this project on a carpet?) however I love it. It's not perfect but neither are we and I think the crinkles give it a real life map quality.

I spent some time sticking my pins in the map before Tim got home from work. I purchased a container of map pins from Walmart and we discussed ahead of time what colors we would use. Tim's favorite color is green so any place he has visited on his own will have a green pin. My favorite color is blue so any place I visit on my own will be marked with a blue pin. We have decided on red pins for any place we have gone or will go together. As we have kids in the future we will add new pin colors to show where we go as a family.

Now for some details!

I loved sticking all my blue pins in Europe and remembering my trips to Spain, England and France.

Tim and I have been on a few adventures so far together including: our trip to New Jersey, our Disney World vacation, a trip to Vermont, visiting the Bronx Zoo, visiting my parents in Florida, and various trips around RI, CT and MA.

I traveled quite a bit growing up but we went to Disney World pretty much every other year and repeated quite a few locations more then once. I did visit Puerto Rico a few times and we took a Disney cruise to Nassau Bahamas and Castaway Cay but I still have dreams of visiting most of the Caribbean! Tim has been on a couple cruises through the Bahamas so his pins definitely dominate in that section of the map. Most of our pins remain on the east coast while only three of mine made their way to the west. I have visited Los Angeles, Anaheim and Laguna Beach in California but since I ran out of blue pins I have one representing Laguna Beach. I have also been to Las Vegas Nevada and Tijuana in Mexico but there is so much to explore on that coast!

We have dreams of visiting more states and countries in the future and now this map will inspire us and keep track as we make those dreams come true!

This entire project was done for $85 and more then half of that was on the map which you can definitely get for cheaper if you aren't picky about what your map looks like!

How do you keep track of your travels? Where do you dream of traveling to? Any future travel plans? Please share I'd love to hear!