A Map of the World

This past weekend I painted a mural — a map of the world — on the wall in the boys’ bedroom. The whole room isn’t done yet, but I’m really happy with how the map turned out and I didn’t want to wait to share until I have the room all styled and staged. The truth is that probably won’t ever happen (though I have the best of intentions).

We had been going with a map theme in the boys’ room, but it was all rather blah and without much inspiration. But then I saw a mural (of Napoleon Dynamite) on the Design Mom blog, and I suddenly knew what to do.

The process, short and sweet (and cheap!): I bugged my mom to dig out her overhead projector. (I have no idea why my parents have an overhead projector, but the last time it was used was probably when we made the patterns for Simon’s Totoro nursery.) I found a world map online, had Jason figure out how to print it out in the size I needed, and took it to Staples to make a transparency (~ $4 because the map spanned two sheets of paper). I projected the map on the wall and traced the outline of the continents in pencil. (I chose a map that showed rivers and mountains too, and I traced most of the details. I ended up not using the rivers and mountains.)

Surprisingly, the tracing only took about an hour. I am not a perfectionist. I originally liked the idea of letting the image wrap around more than just one wall, but ultimately decided against it for simplicity’s sake.

At Lowe’s I bought 8 half-pint-size paint samples, one color for each continent and one for the ocean (~$25). I  chose red, Simon’s favorite color, for Asia and brown, Ian’s favorite, for North America. I used brushes I already had at home and just filled in the shapes.

All told, the painting probably took 6 or 7 hours. It was absolute bliss to have so many hours to myself doing something both creative and productive.

The boys both expressed several times throughout the process how cool/awesome/pretty they thought it was. With each new continent, Ian would say, “Oh, Mommy, I like Asia” or “What’s that? South Amerita? It’s so tool!”

Having time to myself to listen to music and just think and pray did me good. It was fun to pray for friends who have traveled and/or lived or live now in different parts of the world as they came to mind. I had a great time remembering places I’ve had the privilege to visit and did plenty of dreaming of places I still want to go (and soon!). I also had all kinds of thoughts about how to use the map practically to teach the kids about all manner of things.

The final product is certainly not without its faults. As I said, I am not a perfectionist. I added a whole island in Asia that doesn’t actually exist (a drip about the size of Crete that I was too slow to wipe off, so we’ll just consider it my secret  island. Maybe Jason and I will retire there one day), and I had to fudge the border between Europe and Asia. I also erased lots of islands and peninsulas and felt bad that I was willy nilly changing coastlines with sloppy outlining. But Jason assures me that the liberties I took are unlikely to cause an international incident. I hope he’s right.

My friend Christy had the brilliant, fantastic, and wonderful-beyond-words idea of adding illustrations (like sea monsters and such). I sincerely hope we actually do that, but I’m calling the mural done, or at least at a stopping point, for now. Next up, I have some ideas about super-simple quilts to make for the beds and some ideas about what to do on the remaining walls and such. When I do those things, it’s likely I’ll take  a few photos and write a little something about it.