Map Heart Wall Hanging

Here is the last creation from my 3 heart projects.

If you've been reading my blog, then you know about this whole project of the three sad hearts.  If you haven't and you want to read about it, you can go here for the first one and here for the second one.  The lowdown is this.....

I got this shelf from a second hand store.

  
 

I took the hearts off of it and couldn't
throw them away.



 I made this from the first heart.

This from the second one.

And now I've finished the third!  I always wanted to do something with maps.  I have a big atlas from the 50's that my father-in-law gave me and it has wonderful colors.  I have lots of plans for using it and this wasn't one of them, it just turned out that way.  The wood is so ugly and stained that I had to cover it up somehow or sand it out.  I opted for covering it with a map.  First I painted it white, just in case too much dark showed through.  Then I cut out the section of map I wanted and traced the shape of the heart plaque right onto it.  I traced the heart cut-out in the center and then cut that out of the of the map. I used a sponge brush (love those!) and painted the entire front with Modge-Podge.  I carefully placed the map on top and tried to get all of the air bubbles out.  Then I went over the top of the map with some more Modge-Podge and let it dry. 

I tried several things in the center of that heart and didn't like any of them until I came across some maroon mulberry paper from my card making box. (I have a box for everything!) I folded  the paper in half so it had a double thickness and was less opaque, and fastened it to the back with just some good old tape. Then I outlined the inside of the heart with a piece of garden twine and some tacky glue.

It took me a little while to figure out how I was going to hang it, since I didn't want to try to drill through the Modge-Podged map.  I finally settled on eye-screws and a piece of garden twine to match the outline of the heart.

There ya go!  Three little Valentine projects out of some sad wooden hearts I would have otherwise thrown away.  No money was spent on these three projects other than the $5.00 for the used shelf! Oh yeah...and I have a shelf to makeover now.