I love paper maps and road tripping. As I still haven’t learnt to drive, I’m usually the navigator. Road trips are one of mine and Jon’s top favourite things to do, being able to get in a car and drive wherever the road takes us and finding new places to explore.

When we first came to Edinburgh we spent a lot of time driving around the coast and planning little day trips. Unfortunately we no longer have a car in Edinburgh, we couldn’t afford it, and it’s something we miss a lot to be able to just go for a drive.

Whilst road tripping in the US, we had this great mapbook in the car with us that I used to get us around. We did consider a GPS/using internet but thought a paper map won’t tell us to go the wrong way (that would be my responsibility..) and we wouldn’t have to worry about signal and having to spend extra money. The mapbook successfully didn’t get us lost whilst out there.

I’ve recently been looking up ways to display maps as artwork , and I found this thanks to Martha Stewart (instructions in the link). This is a perfect way to display a road trip!

I’m thinking I’ll do a large map of the West of the US and sew on our road trip and frame it like above :)

So yesterday I had a little play with a free map I picked up in San Francisco. I hand sewn on the route that we took of a day we spent sightseeing (this one) and put an X where we began and ended - the San Remo Hotel.

Having completed this I’m eager to sew the big road trip next. I stuck this San Francisco map in to my scrapbook and I think it looks pretty good!

S. xo