my $12 alaska wall art

Several months ago I purchased a vintage school map of Alaska for $10 at my local antique mall. At the time, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with the massive map, but after our most-amazing-trip-ever to Alaska this summer I thought it would be cool to incorporate the giant state into our home somehow.

Then, as I was sorting through some crap in the garage, I saw it. I knew exactly what I would do with the giant Alaska map. I would frame it. With a frame I already had...

Some of you may recall the horrible bathroom mirror tragedy. It was terrible. The mirror I had purchased for our old bathroom fell to the ground an shattered to a billion pieces just one day shy of me taking it off the wall for our move. It was awful. But... being the resourceful person that I am, I made Lance keep the frame... you know... just in case.

So. Back to the story at hand... Once I decided how to proceed, I just needed to gather a few simple supplies and get to work on my Alaska wall art...

My supplies were pretty simple... the Alaska map, the salvaged mirror frame, a piece of $2 plywood (cut to size by the nice man at Lowes)...

...oh, and spray adhesive.

This map was huge. What did I expect?? Alaska is a ginormous state, so obviously it needs a ginormous map... it only makes sense.

I needed to decide in advance what portion I wanted to include in the frame. Once I had that all figured out, I trimmed away at the edges.

Then I used the good ol' spray adhesive to glue the map in place. This was perfect for this project. But... someone asked about this glue in yesterday's thankful thursday comments... about possibly letting their kids use this for some art projects. Probably not the best idea... unless of course, you want every.single.surface in your home to be sticky... including your kids. Anytime I use this product, I always get it all over my hands somehow... and usually everywhere else.

Once I sprayed the map in place, I just used my hands to smooth out any air bubbles.

Then I slipped the plywood piece into place and used the existing staples to secure everything. This was probably the hardest step, only because I had to basically pull out the staples half way then press them into back of the plywood.

Then, tah-dah!!! My $12 wall art is finished! And this literally took me all of 20 minutes to do. I love it! I love the colors and I love that it brings back memories of our Alaskan cruise from last summer.

So, there you have it... our $12 wall art... I love it.