Europe Travel Wall Project

I don't 'Pinterest', or whatever that thing is, so this is kind of my own personal craft board tonight.  Like most simple Texas boys, my interests tend to revolve around sports, cars, and guns.  In spite of this, my wife thinks that I have a hidden inner-artistic side that comes out from time to time.  I don't think I'm artistic at all - I certainly can't draw or paint or anything.  I just think I like solving problems and a good project is pretty much all about problem solving.

We had a wall in our breakfast room that was bare so I decided to use it as a travel wall of sorts.  The reason I did it was primarily to encourage us to travel more.  I figured if you look at it everyday you'll say things like "we should go to Ireland"... and then actually go to Ireland!  I decided to go with Europe, and because there's room, Northern Africa.  I figured I would outline all the countries and then paint in the flags of those countries when Branelle and I had visited them together.  'Together' is the key - I've been to a lot of places and Nel has been to Russia since we've been a couple but they only get painted in if we go together.

Going back over my map with a magic marker.

The first step was to get an outline of Europe on the wall.  I thought an overhead projector would do the trick but I couldn't find one so I hit Craigslist.  Some lady in Pearland had dozens of them in her garage (no idea why) and I picked one up for about $20.  I then got some transparency printer paper and found an online map I liked and printed it out.  I put it on the wall and traced it in pencil then went back over the lines with a magic marker. 

The wall before any countries were filled in.

We had already been to Europe when I initially did the wall so I had some countries to fill in.  I wanted it to be interesting, not just solid colors from the flags.  I made the decision to actually try to paint the flags over the countries.  For some, this is really easy.  France, Italy, Germany, etc. have simple three bar designs and lots of room on the wall.  Other countries have much more intricate flags and/or are very small.  I've had to get creative with a few of them.

This was my initial run.  I had to make a few decisions.  For example, we obviously haven't been to every Greek island, but we've been to some so I painted in all of the islands as part of Greece.  However, islands like Sicily and Corsica I treat as separate even though they belong to Italy and France respectively since they have their own governments and flags.  

This demonstrates how I address some of the more intricate flags.  Here we have Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro.  I make an effort to use the countries borders as sort of an outline over the flag instead of trying to cram the entire flag or crest into it.  Branelle and I have visited most of Europe's "micro countries" such as San Marino which you can see as a little blue and white dot sitting inside Italy on the left here.  They're so small you just can't do much with them other than get the colors right.

Here we have Sicily and the tiny island nation of Malta.  I think I did pretty well getting the Maltese flag represented in such a tiny spot...or spots. 

This is the map as it currently sits - I think there are something like 17 or 18 countries filled in with lots to go.  There are some places that will probably never be filled in (I don't plan on taking my wife to Libya anytime soon).  We had a trip to Northern Europe planned this spring, but a number of events both happy and sad postponed it.  I thought we would push to this fall, but life has gotten in the way of that (baby).  The map will probably stay like this for a while, but we'll see how it goes (anyone want to baby sit for a month or so?)