Stealing Good Design: Creative Cartography

Cartography... it's the sort of word you know if you're a Geography teacher, or if you've had the question in a pub quiz. Cartography = maps, and I wasn't surprised when my sister (who is a Geography teacher) was asked by the Art teacher at her school if she had old maps that her kids could cut up for a project. Maps are pretty, they're also personal with locations holding memories, and I'm noticing them being used more and more for cards etc.
So, where am I going with this... I wanted to make Kellie a wedding card that was a bit different and I thought I'd bring in this map idea. The idea would mean acquiring a map of where she's from and where her now husband hails from. This, I quickly discovered would mean £18 if purchasing Ordnance Surveys; that's one expensive card! Instead, I had to compromise by using google images to find the appropriate map sections and then printed them off my computer.
Then, I nicked an idea I saw in a Clifton village gallery and found a silhouette for a man and woman by having a search around the net. I printed the silhouette outline onto the samples of maps and cut them out. The first silhouette I started cutting out was really fiddly and it had too much detail, which took away from the
detail from the map. I kept it simple and chose "toilet door style" icons.
Then I stuck them onto card and triple mounted them with some of the different cards and papers that I had leftover from making Karen's wedding invites a few years ago. The result was this:-

The Bristol man worked the best I think, with 'Mark' having a 'Mangostfiled leg', 'Oldbury Court head' 'Cleeve Hill' torso and 'Frenchay and Staplehill' arms... 'Kellie' is just a kind of indecipherable Caerleon, but a very pretty one I think, with a bit of a pink and blue leg.

I've seen a similar idea with pictures and cards from 'Not on the High Street'...

These are £8 and £12 and 150 people have reviewed them on there so I can't imagine how many people have bought them.. a heart is so easy to cut out too!

And some other nice cartography... when I was in Seville all the ladies were walking around with traditional little hand fans and in the window of one of the cutest shops I have ever seen was this one made out of a map of Seville...

I would've gone inside and got a better picture but the shop was shut for the 2 days after we noticed it - Annabel and I nearly cried looking at all the amazing things inside that we couldn't go look at! I might just have to book another city break so I can go back and visit it...

And then I thought, well, I might as well print off another page of a map for the location that Mark and Kellie will be living at now (to wrap their wedding gift in...) It's a small gift, but then, I did make them a lot of cupcakes for their big day:-