Maps-Making your own wall art

I make no secret of the fact that I move. A lot. Via airlines. This means that all your belongings for living somewhere for a year must fit in exactly one suitcase of 20kg and one carry on. I can't afford to ship my belongings and I don't actually know how long I'll be where I'm moving.

That means things like wall art are really low priority. I can slip one or two posters in there but otherwise I face stark (usually) white walls bearing down on me.

So as an after work creative activity my first months in Greece, I spent my time drawing maps. Since I'm me, they are actually set to a Mercator projection and have mostly accurate coastlines. I chose to do Cuba, Spain, and the United States-the three pillars of my heritage.

The base is a black lined fine art pen with water soluble colored pen delineating the political boundaries. Along all the water boundaries are fine blue short lines. Land boundaries are done in brown. I think this lends the maps a subtle dimension. Cuba got mountains but the inaccuracy of them bothered me so Spain and the USA had to go without. Very fine pen was used to write city names approximately where they are in reality. The size was in reality constricted by the size of my paper (A5 pad of sketch paper) so they're really not in scale. If I was living somewhere permanently (or more permanently than a single year) I'd think about framing them with wood and glass but as a temporary 'framing' the edges of the paper are colored.

"the treasure of a honeymoon"

So my cousin got married and I couldn't go. I decided instead, I had to do a present. As I'm poor, I couldn't get them something off their register or whatever so instead I made them a book.

It's meant as a scrapbook for the honeymoon. The moon and star stab bindings are golden to evoke a "honeymoon" literally. There are real constellations in there though the moon is definitely not in the right place. It's 8x10 with a glittery dark blue cover. The star stab binding is another of Becca's designs. The binding has accordion folds to allow the book to expand. That means you can paste stuff on the pages and it won't turn into

overburdened binding

If a stab binding becomes overburdened, it breaks. Most bindings will break eventually (the above spiral binding included) but stab bindings are particularly inflexible and might crack off in the first month of being overburdened. (Yes, I know this from experience.)

To accompany the honeymoon was this map.

This map of Greece (where their honeymoon was) is hand drawn with dip pen & brown ink. Certain islands are labeled as is Athens and Thessaloniki and it is fairly accurate to a Mercator projection. Along all the coast lines are woodcut-esque lines to make it seem old fashioned and particularly hand drawn. I know not everyone is as into documenting their geography and making story maps as I am but I think my cousin is the sort to appreciate it.