DIY Maritime map letters

I’m sure you’ve seen cute map letters like these ones from Not On The High Street:

The price of these letters – not so cute. Five letters cost close to $150.00, and that doesn’t include shipping from England. Insane! But no worries, this a super-easy project to do yourself for a fraction of the price.

Being a beach & ocean lover, I wanted my map letters to have a Maritime theme. Now, in theory, this project should have been fast and easy – glue map to wood letters, DONE! But thanks to my:

1. inability to focus on one thing for more than five minutes,
2. habit of making things 20 times more complicated than they need to be, and
3. an ingrained need for perfection,

everything I do takes longer than it should.

(Have I mentioned that I’m a little on the OCD side? Picture Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory with boobs. Yep, that’s me. So overall, I probably spent a few hours creating creating my map letters – not including waiting time between a couple of steps – but it was really simple and straightforward.)

I bought the white wood letters

B  E  A  C  H

at Michaels for 50% off (I think they were around $3.50 each). I totally forgot to take a “before” picture of them – DOH! But you know the kind of wood letters I mean:

 Image via Jonny’s Sister

I searched the Net for some maps of beaches that I’ve been to. Originally I was going to do use a separate map for each letter, but then I came across this whopper map of the Maritimes:

I like the soft colours and old look to the map. And after I printed it out on 16 sheets of 8-1/2” x 11” paper, I realized I could fit each letter onto an area of the map that I’ve been to – PEI, Cape Breton, and three other areas in Nova Scotia (including my beloved Lunenburg region).

Once I figured out where I wanted each letter to go, I cut out each section from the original map image on my computer using Paint and printed out the map section for each letter on its own sheet of paper. That way, I wouldn’t have to cut off the white borders and try to match up seams between sheets of paper.

Map section for the letter B

Next, I traced out each letter onto the map section that I printed out for it and cut the letters out.

I painted the sides of all the letters a light bluey-green. I realized after the fact that I didn’t get any good pictures of the painted letters. DOH again! Anyway, after the paint dried, I used Mod Podge to attach each map letter  onto each wood letter. And voila, Maritime map letters!

I used a little creative license with the A – I turned PEI about 70 degrees so I could fit more of of the island onto the letter.

And I made sure to fit my very favourite part of the Maritimes onto one of the letters – this is the Lunenburg region in Nova Scotia on the letter E:

I still haven’t sealed my map letters. I need to try out some different types of sealers first to see which one works best with paper. I’m thinking either a clear water-based poluyurethane, Mod Podge, or a spray sealer, Any suggestions?