I’m a great believer in having little mementos and photos around the home to remind you of places you’ve been, things you have done and people you were with. Experiences are the salt of life right? We love travelling and I wanted to have a map to pin all our trips together. I also hoard little mementos like tickets and receipts from these trips and wanted to find a way of displaying them to remind us of all the awesome times we have had. I wanted to do some real life pinning!
Whilst perusing around Spitalfields Market by Liverpool Street I came across a little stand with vintage maps and books. They were so charming I had to dive in. I found a nice World map, but I also wanted a separate for Europe as most of our trips have been to Europe so thought a separate one with a larger scale would be nice to have too. I got them cheaply as they were actually maps that showed where potassium or potatoes or something like that was found in the oldern times!
This DIY is dead easy and requires next to no work. You could knock one out in an hour.
I got a cork board for the back, some glue, x-acto knife and pins of course.
Cut the map to the size you want it to be. Then mark the size on the cork board and cut that to the same size.
All you need to do then is to glue your map on the cork board.
Have a cup of coffee and let it dry. I put mine under some heavy duty books to keep them wrinkle free.
Then the best part! Pinning!
First I thought I would pin Mr Harlow’s trips with one colour, mine with another and together trips with a third, but then I thought it might look a little messy so I decided to just have trips that we had made together. It also has room to grow and inspire us to travel somewhere new. Our pins are way too sparse (= non existent!) in Eastern Europe so that needs to be remedied asap! ;D
They looked a little lonely on our shelves so I then beefed it up with a couple of cork canvases where I pinned tickets, maps, notes, business cards for restaurants, receipts and the like. As I mentioned earlier I’m such a hoarder when it comes to this kind of stuff and the reason for this is that I keep thinking that I will one day make scrapbooks of all our trips and then want to include these type of things on the pages. I’m only nine years behind.. *covering eyes emoji*
I chose things that have especially good memories including a business card for All Bar One in Wimbledon where me and Mr Harlow had our first date ♥
All the little objects on the shelves are also from our trips – little scooter from Sicily, flamingo from Mexico and lucky cat waving at us from Hong Kong.
I love walking past these and seeing some of our memories displayed. It takes me back to some lovely highlights of our trips. Best part is that these boards can keep changing and evolving with next to no effort.
House of Harlow 