Maps

I'm a big fan of maps, but so often they can be pretty expensive to buy. Especially vintage maps as I discovered at my local antique shop on Sunday. There was a pretty cool map of NYC, but it was over $100, which is over my budget.

You know what is not over my budget? Free. When the new subway maps came out last summer they had them sitting out an they were passing them out like crazy and I realized that anyone could have a free map of the city. And they were pretty too. I picked up a few and after discovering how much big mirrors cost I decided to frame the subway map for my dressing parlor.

In full disclosure I have a pretty major fault... I don't like to measure things, or I will but then won't write it down, or will forget to and then just wing it... Thus leading me to buy a frame that was to tall for the map. It was the perfect width though. I thought for sure I was going to have to trim the map on all sides, that is what I get for winging it. My frustrated solution (I am NOT going to lug that huge frame back across town and up town to exchange it) was to make a mat for it... and then paint the mat gold.

I like the finished product and now I can check my handy dandy map on the way out of the apartment unless I'm heading to the upper west side :)