The Pinterest Challenge

To preface my blog post, let me put it out there that I am absolutely addicted to the Young House Love blog.  Sherry is my girl and I enjoy reading her posts very much.  So when she and her homegirl Katie Bower of the Bower Power Blog issued the Pinterest Challenge.  I was all over it like white on rice…like a fat kid to cake…like dots on dice…okay….I’ve got more but I’ll quit.  So for those who don’t know about Pinterest, it’s this awesome site where you can “pin” all your ideas that you come across on the web and organize it.  I heart pinning all things home project and craft based (and lately wedding stuff).  So the Pinterest Challenge was a publicly issued challenge for bloggers to actually follow through on a project pinned on Pinterest.  Like actually follow through.  My inspiration for the challenge came from this picture.

I love the idea of cutting hearts out of a map of areas that are meaningful to both Colby and I.  I’m a sucker for meaningful art!  But where will this art go?!  Gasp!  I know…drum roll please…the bathroom, my house project focus du jour:

That’s what the three squares of card stock hanging on the wall are for.  I bought three frames for this project a while ago and have been testing out the arrangement for a few weeks.  Yes…I admit it…my name is Angie and I’m a procrastinator-aholic.  I’ve been putting this project off for quite some time so thank you Katie and Sherry for lighting a fire under my bum!  Before going full bore into the project, I made myself a prototype:

I used an area of a map that was completely random, where I wouldn’t be using for the actually art project.  It’s the area around Sherbrook, Quebec.  Who’s ever heard of that?  Apparently Colby!  When I showed him the prototype to see if he liked it he was all, “oh, Sherbrook, I’ve been there.”  Who would have thunk it!  So after I got the go ahead and all parties agreed that the project met the cuteness quotient (ok…that’s just in my head), it wall full steam ahead.  Then I was trimming up the background, which was scrapbook paper from the craft store:

Hacking up areas of the map:

And tracing/cutting out the hearts:

The three areas I chose were Rochester, Vermont (Colby’s hometown), Presque Isle, Maine (my hometown), and Bangor/Brewer, Maine (where we live now).  All three areas are very special to us and also conveniently can be found all in one New England map.  First comes love (inserting the hearts):

Then comes marriage (adding the backing):

Then comes the pink hammer to take on the hangers (which totally screwed up my little rime):

Then we marked up our nail hole locations on the wall:

Our simple yet genius method included measuring, marking the location on the paper, then poking a hole through the paper marking the wall behind it.  So when the paper comes off the wall, the starter hole is visible and you just pound the nail right in there.  Then we hung our art on the nails and ta-da!!!!!!

I even put them in map-o-logical order.  For those unfamiliar with map-o-logical order it just means that it resembles the natural order of a map.  Thus, Presque Isle is in the North (top map), Bangor/Brewer is in the center of the state (middle map), and Rochester is slightly Southeast (bottom map).  My favorite map heart is the Bangor/Brewer one:

Mostly because it’s the only map with stuff going on in it.  We both grew up in REALLY rural communities without too many roads so our hometown maps are a little sparse.  Bangor/Brewer spices up the collection!  So check out our updated bathroom space:

Adding art (and the beadboard from yesterday’s post here) really helps make the bathroom feel more finished and lived in.  It’s really starting to come around.  Now if I could only finish priming/painting that baseboard trim!  It’s now next on the bathroom to-do list.  I didn’t notice until I was taking pictures but there’s a definite happy accident going on here.  Can you see it?

The green scrapbook paper totally matches the green in the pot!  I love matching!  Especially accidental matching!

So there’s our little Pinterest Challenge project.  A fun, cute and CHEAP one I might add.  Just how cheap you ask?  Well here is the breakdown: $21 for frames (they were actually $14 each at AC Moore but I bought them one at a time using a 50% off coupon each time…score!), $0.75 for three pieces of scrapbook paper, and $1.50 for the map for a grand total of $23.25. Not bad for art!