12 Days of Christmas Gift Ideas: Day 12 {DIY Map Panel}

I saw this on Pinterest and decided I wanted to make one for my mom for Christmas! It only cost a little over $15 total, so it's a super easy, cheap gift idea!

This is not my picture- all rights go to owner.

This picture is the actual "tutorial". There are no written instructions or anything on the website I got it off of, so I decided to write my own. Here are the steps I followed in making the panel-

1. Purchase supplies. I was able to find everything I needed at Walmart! I found a wood panel by the art canvases for about $12. You can click here to see some cute, cheap panels from Walmart. Next I bought some nails. I bought the shortest nails I could find, they ended up being 18x19mm, 2oz or something like that! They cost $0.94. I chose my mom's favorite color, dark burgundy, to paint the panel. The paint was just the typical acrylic paint you can find at any craft store that costs $0.97. For the string I used crochet thread, which cost like $1.27. 
2. Paint the panel.
3. Find a map of the state/province/country...whatever it is you're making & cut out the outline. Set it on the panel wherever you'd like it to go & VERY LIGHTLY trace around it. After you trace it, you will not need the map anymore and you can throw it away or do what you'd like with it.
4. Keeping a consistent distance between each nail, use a hammer to secure the nails where you'd like them to go. I kept mine about 1/3 inch apart. 
5. Lightly draw a heart in the capital or the hometown of the person you're giving it to. For my mom's, I put the heart around her hometown. 
6. Using a hammer, secure the nails around the outline of the heart. I kept mine as close as I possibly could.
7. Use the thread to "embroider" the map panel. I recommend dividing the # of nails you have on the map outline by the # of nails you have on the heart outline. This will tell you how many times you have to use each nail in the heart. I had to do 7 nails from the map for each nail on the heart.
8. When I was done with the "embroidery", I tied a very secure, small knot and used tacky glue to glue it around the nail so it blended in with all the other strings wrapped around the nail. 

Obviously I'm horrible at writing instructions. Especially #7 and #8! Those probably make no sense at all. Sorry! Hope this helps. My mom loved hers. She immigrated to the US when she was 18, so doing her hometown made her really happy :) 

I probably won't be posting again until after New Years, so Merry Christmas everyone!