My husband and I like to travel and we thought it would be neat to document our trips with photos on a map of the United States. This project evolved as it went on and we had thought about it for a while. We saw numerous different ways to do this, including purchasing them outright for a considerable price. Since we are relatively crafty, we decided to make it ourselves and thought it would be a good project to do together.

It has been several months since we did this project, but I wanted to blog about how to make it in case anyone was interested in making a corkboard map of their own. In this blog post I will explain the tools you need and give step-by-step instructions of how to make it. We documented our project with pictures and have included those for you as well.

Here are all of the things you will need:

• 3/8 inch cork sheet (We used a 1/2 inch thick by 24 x 36 inch sheet ordered off Amazon)
• 1/4 inch thick piece of plywood minimum 24 X 36 inches from your local home improvement store (We used MDF, because it’s what we had at the house)
• Printed map of the outline of the United States big enough to fit within 24 X 36 inches
• Small push pins (We purchased these off Amazon)
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Jig Saw (We had access to a band saw, so we used that)
• Dremel tool with sanding bit
• 1 quart of Contact Cement/adhesive from your local home improvement store
• Paint Brush
• Box Cutter with new blade
• 2- Picture hanging kits rated for 30 pounds
• Drill and drill bit for attaching picture hanging kit
• Screwdriver
• Hammer
• Wallet sized photos of your choice from around the country

* If you want to include Hawaii, like we did, you’ll need blue spray paint as well.

Here’s how to make it:

We went online and bought the cork and push pins. The rest of the items, we either had or purchased at Home Depot. Our printed map was printed by a friend, but you can purchase your own on Amazon, or print it at FedEx Office Center. We ended up getting 1/2 inch cork and we determined that was a little too thick. That’s why we recommend getting 3/8 inch thickness if it’s available.

To start off the project, we cut out the outline of the map with scissors. We then traced the map onto the plywood with a pencil.

The next step is to cut out the map on the plywood, following the traced lines with the jig saw or band saw (if available). Make sure not to touch the lines.

When coming to tight curves, use relief cuts as shown.

Take your Dremel tool and sanding bit, and sand the edges to smooth and fine tune the map edges. Sand down to the pencil marks.

Place the plywood map face down on the cork. Roughly mark with your pencil where the map is on the cork. Give yourself one inch of room around the map just in case.

Now, apply contact cement/adhesive to the face up side of the plywood map following the instructions on the container.

Apply the cement adhesive to the marked area on the cork.

Once dry, place two glued surfaces together. Press firmly following the adhesive container’s instructions.

Use a new box cutter blade, and trim excess cork from around the plywood map.

Now, use the Dremel took with sanding bit to flush up the cork to the plywood.

The map of the contiguous United States is now complete. Now, it’s time to add your desired wall hanging fixtures.We used a wire picture frame hanging kit. We used the appropriate drill bit to make a pilot hole. Make sure to not go completely through your project with the drill bit. We then used screwdriver to install the kit per the instructions on the frame kit.

 

To Make Hawaii:

We used a cut off piece of the plywood and cut it into a rectangle that is 9 inches wide by 7 inches tall. We spray painted the rectangle blue. While waiting for the paint to dry, we then used our paper map to cut out the islands of Hawaii and then transferred those onto some of the leftover cork. We cut the islands out of the cork with a box cutter then sanded the edges of the cork islands with the Dremel tool. Once the blue paint was dry, we then used the contact cement (or you could use super glue) to glue the islands to the blue rectangle. We then attached a mounting loop to the back for hanging on the wall.

Final Steps:

Figure out where you would like to put the map and Hawaii on the wall and attach necessary hardware to the wall with a hammer. Now you have an idea of what your map will look like on the wall. The only thing left is to add photos! It’s probably best to take the map off the wall while you add your photos, securing them in place with push pins. Place the map back on the wall and admire your work!

* NOTE: We would have included Alaska in our map, but we have never been there!