Mariner's Compass Map Art

I have finally begun to feel like progress is being made in my life. It's a fantastic feeling. I am now officially in the third trimester so I feel somewhat like a fire has been lit under my bum to get things finished. I'm doing really well with the stuff I want to finish, grad school and dishes tend to suffer these days.

I'm so proud of myself though. Today I pulled out all the stops and actually got my craftiness on.
It was awesome.

Little boy's "nursery" is turning out to be very nature/map/travel/adventure themed, which is fantastic because I get to reuse so much stuff that I already have from my classroom. Today I made this mariner's compass art.

I completely love everything about it, except the yellow tinge in the photos because we get no. natural. light. in our apartment. In real life, it's not got that faint twinge of yellow on the right and it looks pretty dang awesome.

Here's how I went about it:
After finding a compass clip art online that I liked, I put it into illustrator and made a square 7.5 inches wide so that I could resize the art to exactly the dimensions I wanted. I knew I wasn't going to use the N,S,E,W letters so I didn't worry about those going over the edge. We have some frames sitting around unused and I knew which one it would go into, which is how I decided on the size.

I printed the compass out on cardstock, and then cut out all the white parts. This was a touch tricky in places and required a fairly steady hand, but only took a few minutes.

With every piece that came out I got more and more excited about it.

Here it is all cut out. I confess that I got a little bit nervous here that it was going to look too small in the frame, but it all worked out for the best.

I bought this atlas at Christmas a couple years ago specifically to use one map page for a project, and have hung onto it since. Now I just had to decide which page I liked with the compass.

I just flipped through holding the compass and frame on different maps looking for one that I liked aesthetically - and didn't think I'd need to use for another project one day. In the end, I settled on Alaska. It seems appropriate after our babymoon there last month, plus I like the blues and greens. It's the perfect blend of sentimentality and attractiveness.

I wanted there to be some dimension to the compass part to help it stand out a little more so I used 1/8 inch foam photo mounting squares. Some of them needed to be chopped up with the exacto knife to fit, but that was easy enough to do.

Then it was as simple as sticking the compass on the map. Easy peasy. I added a foam square to each corner so that it would stay the same distance from the glass all the way around and not get smooshed in the center while getting bent around the edges.

Illustrator came to the rescue to add a little banner to the bottom of the page. I made a whole page of banners of different shapes and colors, only to find out that the one I liked best printed was the one I liked least on the screen. Isn't that always the way it goes?

Here's a PDF of the compass art I used along with the companion banner, you know, just in case someone in your life needs a little mariners compass art also.

Mariner's Compass Art File

I know I already said it, but I love, love, love it. Best part? It seriously cost me nothing because I only used things I had on hand, plus, it was fast and fun to put together.

It's just one more thing to make my FIL laugh and tell me I had to marry the Hubs to discover that secretly I'm a geographer. I can't help it. I heart maps, and I always have. Just wait until he sees the nursery all finished. I'm prepping myself now for his reaction.