Travel Frames

I wanted to share a craft that may work for anyone searching for a meaningful last-minute gift. I actually made this for my mom this year as part of her birthday gift (and made myself a matching one!). I came up with the idea as I was going through and organizing old photos and wanted to make a gift that utilized some of the photos I hadn’t seen for many years. Growing up with my dad in the Air Force, my mom and I moved quite a bit. So I chose a photo of us taken in each state we lived in (Texas, California, South Carolina, and North Dakota) and put them together in a frame. I then added portions of maps from each state and gold shapes of each state near the photo to bring together the theme.

Even if you haven’t lived in different cities, this project could be adapted to be places you love, memorable places you have travelled, different family gathering spots, etc. The instructions for this project are pretty much up to you, but I hope what I put together will help inspire you.

What You’ll Need:

• Frame

• Maps of significant places (printed or from a book)

• Photos taken at the places you choose

• Colored/patterned paper

• Glue

• Scissors/paper cutter

• (optional) Charms or other decorations

Directions:

1. First you will need to choose the locations you want to use and the photos that correlate. For mine, I had four locations, but any number should work.

2. I purposely searched for a frame that had four photo slots, but depending on how you arrange your images, most frames will be usable. 

3. With your images ready and your frame chosen, it is now time to work on preparing the extra features. For the areas where I used a map, I ended up cutting up an old atlas (which are pretty reasonable to buy if you go to Target or Walmart), but you could also print maps as well. 

4. To prepare for assembling, I used textured plain-colored paper (as to not compete with the busy map images) and cut out pieces to fit the size of the slots in the frame. I then trimmed my images to be a bit smaller than the paper and glued them in the center of the paper.

5. After the glue is dry, it is time to think about decorations. I cut my map pieces to be strips that went over a corner of each photo, but they could be cut into any shape or even be the paper behind your photos. I then added a few charms I found at Hobby Lobby that were the outlines of Texas and California. Since South Carolina and North Dakota were not available, I printed small images of the state outline, cut them out, and traced them onto sparkly gold paper. I then attached my charms/cut outs (I placed them on top of a piece of the plain-colored paper cut into a circle.

6. With everything assembled and dried, it is time to put the images inside the frame! 

Here are some photos of the final product:

To me, this gift is a great way to utilize older photos and remember significant places you have been. Even though it has been a while since I have lived in many of these places, they still played a significant part of my life and I like being able to remember them. Whether it is a place you call home or a place you love to visit, I think this project is a great way to preserve those memories.