Map Art the Right Way!

Hola darlings.

Yeah, I haven't been around much.  Been diagnosed with an unexpected heart condition and, well, just trying to deal with that new reality right now.  Dealing with the monstrous heat and drought here in southeast Wisconsin has been the pits, too  Seems the world is going to HELL, the Hot Fiery Hell of the old religious stories.  Mr. D, my significant other (who lives 1000 miles away and that is probably the only thing that has allowed us to maintain our relationship for 14 years), is also undergoing his own health crisis.  What the flying f?  He turned 61 a few months ago and my 61st is next month, and all of a sudden we're both falling apart? 

What I need is a health crafter to help me stick myself back together, and Mr. D too.  Damn!

Anyway, while I'm sitting here dealing with a serious bout of indigestion/gaseous stuff churning around inside my stomach that just will NOT come out - forgive me for mentioning the word farts but they would really be helpful right now - I've been burping for over a day.  Who knew that popcorn would have such an effect on my poor digestive tract now that I'm on all these news meds?  Geez.  The doctor never mentioned DO NOT EAT POPCORN.  I had some yesterday for lunch.  A nice low-cal high fiber food, right?  I need to drop a serious amount of weight -- at least 20 pounds and preferably more.  Popcorn!  But now it seems I cannot eat it.

Sigh.

But I'm not one to let "Life" defeat me for long, darlings.  Never have been, never will be, right up to the moment when I take my last breath, and my plan is for that to be a hell heck of a long time away yet!  Well, my condition isn't that dire, but I'm on rat poison Coumirin (is that how it's spelled) -- Warfarin.  Yeah, that rat poison blood thinner stuff.  Well, how do you think it kills rats?  Not pretty, let me tell you!  It kills them from the inside out, they bleed to death on the inside.  Like SUPER YECHY.

And this is what I'm now pumping into my poor bod on a daily basis.  But trust me, I will NOT be on this stuff for whatever remains of my life.  Aint gonna happen.

So, here I am blabbing all about me me me, but this blog isn't about me, except when it comes to my decorating escapades, which lately have taken a damper.  Well, other things to deal with, as I said.

Today I'm writing about the map art I'm now seeing all over the internet!  Like wow - it's everywhere!  That's a good thing, in my eyes, because I've been in love with maps for just about forever.  There is this nagging feeling in the back of my mind, though, that I may have already written about this.  But I'm too lazy to go scrolling back through my already posted items to check for sure.  So if this is a double, my apologies :)

As you may recall, I had my own disastrous run-in with a framed map I'd propped up on my living room mantle doing a serious crash and burn.  In fact, I'm STILL finding little bits of glass here and there, weeks later!  Geez.  That means my carpet has taken to growing like a lawn and forcing glass up to the surface or my cleaning lady is being less than diligent in vacuuming.  Or I need a new vacuum to replace the new vacuum.

There it was - it nearly fit into the frame (with glass) and I loved how it looked.  I took one of those thick fuzzy thingies (don't remember what they're called at the moment - a senior black-out, darlings) that usually gets stuck onto the bottom of chair legs so they won't scratch floors, cut it in half, colored it with a marker, and placed each half strategically in front of the framed map, to act as stops, to prevent it from sliding off the mantle.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.  I was so proud of myself!  But - IT DID NOT WORK. The map somehow fell off the mantle anyway, and when it toppled it took with it the glass hurricane lamp on the right, the t.v., and not shown in this photograph, a very precious to me plaster of paris "gold" elephant in the Indian style.  It all came crashing down one morning while I was upstairs getting ready to go to work.  It happened to be on a morning when my cleaning lady was coming, and she found me frazzled, sweating and in tears, trying to clean things up.

When I did this "project" (basically putting a map into a frame, some project!) I had seen a few maps as art on the internet but had, at that point, no idea of just how many variations on the theme this idea had!  Now I know better.  I must always assume that anything I think is a good idea that occurs to me has already occurred to someone else long before, and done better, faster, righer. 

So, here is how to do map art the RIGHT way!

From The Happier Homemaker, DIY Wooden World Map Art, June 12, 2012. 
Melissa does her own way less expensive version of a $475 map, and it's gorgeous.  Would love to have this hanging in my house - well, just about all over the place.  I told you, I'm into maps. 

From The Happier Homemaker (see link above).

From Nesting Place, How to Make Map Art, April 14, 2011.
Seriously, this has some fabulous displays of map art.  And who ever thunk up the idea to just wrap a cheapy old map around a sturdy cardbox box -- well, sheer genious!  Geez, Jan, you could have done that.  Duh.  The possibilities...



From Nesting Place (see link above).

From Little Birdie Secrets, Canvas Map Wall Decor, March 28, 2011.
Next to covering a cardboard box (like wrapping a gift) with a map, this is a project I might try on my own.  It "looks" simple enough -- but we all know how that goes, don't we...  This was actually a guest blog entry from Serena at Creative Juices Decor.  This link is just to the general website, not to the specific project.  I am too tired to go hunting around for it, sorry (not).

From Little Birdy Secrets (see link above).

All of these are great ideas for creating wonderful wall art at a very low cost. In this 24/7/365 world we now live in, we should be mindful that less than 500 years ago, some religions taught that the Earth was flat and if a ship sailed too far it would fall "off" the world into oblivion.  Men who boarded ships to go exploring never knew if they would ever see their homes and loved ones again.  The first recorded circumnavigation of the globe (via ship) was in the 1500's, although Gavin Menzies makes a compelling case for the Chinese doing it in the 1400s!  Take a good look at this map of the world, and imagine what it must have been like, 500 years ago, setting out in a ship the length of my house to go into the unknown...