Cheap and Easy World Map Painting Tutorial

We move quite often and travel even more than that. The military keeps us on our toes move-wise (I’ve literally moved more than 20 times in my life) but you could say we travel as one of our hobbies.That being the case, I haven’t put forth a real effort in decorating our house. I mean, we have the basics covered. But, for a person who takes as many pictures as I do, I need to hang more pictures and add a little more of our personalities to our house. So, little by little, I’ve been collecting things and decorating a little more to make our house more home-like.

I have been wanting a really cute painting to hang above our faux fireplace mantle. Every season, I like to change what is sitting on top of the mantle. I wanted something that could potentially look great for all seasons. Originally I was looking at home decor stores for something that could fit in our home. But most of the things I found were either outside of my price range or not quite what I wanted. Finally I found a painting and was waiting for a sale to buy it. In the meantime, I found a rather large canvas in my craft closet. When I had first bought this canvas, I was going to make a cute sign to put in our nursery. It was a good idea, but now I’m not too keen on the idea. So, I had a 24 inch by 36 inch canvas at my disposal. After finding a world map that I liked, I tweaked it in Photoshop to get the shape and color I needed. After printing, I folded into quarters. After the quarters, I folded it into 16ths.

Basically it’s like the above picture. I divided it this way because it was the easiest for me to copy.

I used a pencil here. I suppose you could probably use a pen. But I wanted to erase my lines when I was done. If you’re going for a more rustic look, you could use a pen or marker to leaves the lines there.

It took me about 2 days worth of nap time (approximately 4 hours) to finish this drawing. I definitely could have done a more abstract, less detailed drawing. But I really love this type of work. If you don’t really like drawing this way, it’s art, man. Do it the way you want.

I used the paint from here. I’ve used it on several projects and love it. It’s a bright, happy gold. But a rose gold would be soooo pretty for this application. It took a few coats to get a really opaque gold. Again, you can do less or more coats.

It turned out beautifully! I love that it makes my living room so happy looking. Having all of the materials and tools available in my house made this pretty much free. But if you don’t have the materials available, it still shouldn’t cost more than $20 to make.

The world map template is free in my Free Resource Library. If you would like access to my Library, enter your email in the form below and you will be sent the password. I look forward to hearing from you!