Weddingbee boards

DH isn't so much of a "gifts" person, he likes experiences (and I'm the opposite!), so for our paper anniversary I decided to take our experiences and make a gift out of them! Here's my inspiration from Folksy.com which was £30/$46:

This one I couldn't find the original source for other than this website.

What I used:

• Cricut Expression (working in conjunction with Sure Cuts A Lot)
• Exacto knife
• Glue
• Ikea frames
• Cardstock (I used white and kraft paper)
• Maps x 6
• Paper cutter or a steady hand and scissors

Here's what I did:

I went to my local CAA (Canadian version of AAA) and got some free maps. I wanted to make 4 frames so they could be displayed 2 x 2 on the wall. The man/woman one is where we grew up, so I got a map of my hometown and a map of DH's. The second is where we met, so map #3. The third I called "Where we fell in love" which I actually cheated a little and used the road trip we were on when we got engaged otherwise it would have been the same as where we met! The last was "where we got married". We got married in a tiny town, so I wasn't going to find a big map of it. I used a map that showed where we lived AND the town we got married in which I thought was cute because you can see all the roads we drove on to get to the venue. Good enough ;)

Cost: Free.

Next I went to Ikea and bought four Ribba frames at $6.99/each. Don't forget to have a $0.50 hot dog while you're there ;)

Cost: $31.60 with taxes

How to do it:

If you have a Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL) or know someone who does, your crafting life has just been improved ten fold. If you don't have it, your SOL because they're not selling SCAL anymore due to some pending lawsuits :(

I found some .SVG clip art online of the outlines of a man/woman to put into SCAL, along with hearts from the shapes library and put them on my page. Keep in mind the size of the opening in your frame/matte as well as any text you might want.

I cut them out of a thicker white cardstock. Don't throw away or rip the piece of paper you cut it out of!

I took that piece of paper my shapes were taken from and used them as a template. I centered the shape over the part of the map I wanted to use, taped it down lightly, and cut it out with an exacto knife.

(I love this Exacto knife, you put your finger through the orange loop and use it like a pencil almost. It gives you SO much control, highly recommend it.)

Repeat for your other shapes/maps. When that's all done, glue your shaped map to your shaped white piece of cardstock (just to give it a bit more substance).

Then I used Illustrator to create some text on my background for the picture frames. I had: One boy. One girl. (This is from our wedding invites and covered where we grew up) Met in an elevator. (True story!) Fell in love. (Our trip) And got married. (Map to our venue)

I printed that out on some thick kraft paper cardstock. I trimmed them down to just a bit bigger than the opening of the matte in the frame, and taped them in place. Then I used double sided tape to stick on my people. Repeat for the other frames, reassemble and wrap!

All in all, I think the whole thing took me about an hour or so (excluding shopping time). It was quick and inexpensive!

Here's the whole thing!

When I actually get them up on the wall (maybe tonight or tomorrow), I'll take another photo for you. DH loved them. I'm looking forward to expanding it when we have kids, or after our house is built I'd like to do a heart with some of our blueprints in it. I tried to pick frames that Ikea would be likely to carry for a few years, or if I need to reframe them it's not like I spent a ton on expensive frames in the first place!

So glad you guys like it! I wish I could have used some of our road trip maps, but they were locked up in our Winnebago 3 hours away and I didn't have enough time to go get them. I'm hoping to hang these puppies up tonight since my FIL and his wife are coming for dinner tomorrow night, I want to show them off ;)

Glad you guys like it! I had a bunch of girlfriends over yesterday for an Epicure party and they all LOVED it and they were asking about each of the maps, etc, so it was a great little conversation starter for the ones that didn't know each other :)

@Bostongrl25: Ooh ooh! How did they turn out?? I just saw your comment!!