seeshellspace: Projectors and World Maps

This Projector project has been a super long process for me.
The actual wall art only took about an hour with the help of my boys.
But then I needed to decide what quote I wanted on the wall with it.
That took a while searching online to find the perfect one.
This quote comes from Dieter F. Uchtdorf.

Then I needed my sweet Sister-in-Law to cut the vinyl out for me.
We played around with different fonts and sizes until I finally designed it myself in photoshop.
I have included the design with the font types in this post.
Really that part didn't take very long.
But getting my boys to clean and organize their room and getting around to making curtains for their window took the absolute very longest.
I can't blame it all on the boys though.
I just got the curtains done yesterday.
So finally I can share this very cool piece of wall art.
We may add color or something to the places we have been, but I'm still undecided about that.
So until then, here's the finished project.

I hope you like it!

First I found a world map in Google Images I liked. The hard part was that I wanted the United States to have each individual state. I couldn't find a World map that had them, but just the countries for the rest of the world.

So I merged the two maps in Photoshop. If you look too close, the Baja of the coast of California doesn't quite match up, but you probably wouldn't have noticed had I not told you about it. Then I took it to Staples for a transparency. $1 well spent.

Then we set up the projector in their room and got to tracing. We used paint pens from Michael's.

It was fun working on it with my boys. We said things like, "I got Africa."

"What are all these islands off Australia?"

"I call the United States!"

"South America is Done!"

"Sheesh, Greenland is HUGE!"

A few times we pulled out our real world map to figure out what exactly we were tracing.

It was a great geography lesson for all of us.

Next I got the vinyl cut. Here's the design with the font names at the bottom.

And finally Done!

The vintage school desk I inherited a super long time ago and we have had it in the kids room ever since. My older boys can't fit in it any more but it still looks cool!