Map Heart Frame

I saw this idea and thought it was the cutest thing. My in-laws anniversary is on the 30th and they were hauling off our carpet for us, so I thought this would be cute for them!

Where I got the Idea: Queen B - Creative Me
Time: 90 minutes
Supplies: 6 sheets of card stock (5 are off white and 1 is yellow for the accent)
Sewing pins
Heart stencil
Pencil
Scissors
Masking Tape
Long Frame
Pen & someone with nice hand writing

Instructions:

This was a Friday afternoon decision to do this project, so on my way home from work I went to Marshall's to find a frame. This one was $13, had I spent some time looking for other frames I probably could have found one for less. 

1. Prep: I found the address to the 5 places that were meaningful to my in-laws: where they met, where they were married, where they lived for 15 years, where they loved traveling, and the house they love now. I found the address on mapquest and printed them on the card stock. I tried to be clever, save paper, and use one side for each...with mapquest's headers & footers that didn't actually work.

2. Cut Stencils: I went to look for a heart punch at Joanns. First, they were all smaller than I wanted. Second...wow! $18!??! Seriously!? So I grabbed a stencil set that was $5 (still hated spending $5 for it). I traced the stencil with a pen (because I'm lazy and there wasn't a pencil in my immediate vicinity).  I did this for all of the locations. You MAY want to get an extra few sheets of card stock. One of the locations was zoomed out a little bit too far, I wish I had zoomed in, but I just had enough card stock (and wasn't making yet ANOTHER trip to the store).

Note: I had initially hoped to paint the back of the frame yellow, but since it was a long frame, I wanted to use the back of the insert (you know the one with the fake pictures on it). There was still too much white on the frame, so Alex said cut a heart out behind it...so we did!

3. Yellow Hearts - I cut a plethora of yellow hearts (okay maybe not a plethora, but as many as I could squeeze out of the 8x11 sheet of card stock I had left). I thought about doing a patterned design, but this is the one that looked the best. I just rolled a piece of masking tape to hold them in place. It gave the hearts a little bit of dimension...or as much as you can in a frame.

4. Pins - I was worried that the pins were going to be too thick. I used all red sewing pins and put a pin where the actual location was. Because the pins obviously stuck through the back of the board, I just folded them over and taped the back. 

5.  Labels - Alex has really ridiculously nice handwriting. It's actually the only reason I married him (kidding). So I made him write the we met. we married. we lived. we traveled. we loved. This was his "fun" handwriting.

Ultimately, I thought they turned out great. My in-laws were touched. It was a quick project. I am looking forward to having enough history with Alex to make one of my own. All though we could

 do just a UGA one....we met. we cheered. we lived. we loved. we lost?...