I’ve been excited about this idea for a while: a map on a pinboard! Awesome!

It took a while, but I finally got together everything needed and I was able to knock out the whole project in an afternoon. At first my plan involved a sharpie and LOTS of tracing, but this map is way too detailed. Instead I transferred the map from a printout I made. I’d never used the transfer method on something this large, and it turned out to be a bit more problematic than I expected. Still, I’m pretty pleased with the final product

It actually works a lot like a temp tattoo: first you need a mirror image of whatever you want to transfer (black and white works best.) I needed 2 pages for this so I printed them with overlap and used those "X"s to line them up. Put the prints face down on the surface you want to transfer onto. Then using a Prismacolor colorless blending marker saturate the back of the paper while simultaneously pressing down. You have to be really careful about not moving the paper until the transfer is done. Otherwise you'll get some really unfortunate smudging.

The real fun was trying to figure out what was important enough that I wanted to mark it. The numbered pin boxes only have 25 pins in them, so you have to pick and chose. I chose the obvious ones: places I’ve lived, worked, and places I have fond memories of. I left a few pins off, for future adventures!