How to Make a Photo Travel Map

How was your weekend? We took a short two-day trip to our new hometown for Mike’s first day in his new job, a little house shopping and getting to know our new church family. They have been such a blessing to us and we are excited to finish selling our home so that we can move. I shared our current home a few weeks ago and you got a glimpse of the living room.

One of my favorite spots in this space isn’t visible in this photo. It’s off to the right of our fireplace and is where we display some of our travel photos.

Prior to the birth of our little boy, we had the opportunity to travel a lot. We’ve been on mission trips to Africa, visited big cities across the US and then spent our “babymoon” in Europe. Of course, taking photos is a requirement when traveling, but what do you do with all those photos afterward?

Inspired by travel maps, we hung a vintage style map inside a large silver frame (eventually, we turned it into our own DIY travel map). The frame was picked up at a yard sale for less than $10 and I love all the detailing and that it has a metallic finish.

Over the years we’ve surrounded the frame with photos from our travels. They are primarily our favorite architectural images from the trip.

To keep them uniform, they are all edited to Black & White, with high contrast. I edit them in Photoshop, but you can use all kinds of Photo Editors to do similar functions, like PicMonkey, which is free.

They are printed on 8x10s by Canvas People. You can often get a coupon code for a free 8×10 canvas print, with the cost of shipping. I have found that shipping typically runs me around $10. So each 8×10 surrounding this map cost about $10 each.

I chose a large wall so that I could add the photos as we traveled. In other words, I didn’t buy all 10 prints at once, and the arrangement has been tweaked when we’ve added more prints.

They are always a great conversation piece. Sometimes our friends will recognize a location, because they’ve visited there as well!

If you are interested, here’s the roundup (from top left, counter clockwise):

1. Glockenspiel Clock Tower in Munich, Germany
2. Gondola in Venice, Italy
3. Market Square Clock Tower in Venice, Italy
4. The Bourse in Philadelpia
5. The Kentucky Theatre in Lexington
6. Newark Penn Station in New Jersey
7. Colosseum in Rome, Italy
8. Reid Murdoch Building in Chicago
9. Downtown Indianapolis (building name unknown)
10. Pike Place Market in Seattle

How do you display the photos from your travels?