Going to start this post giving you a glimpse of my current state:

So much excitement! Even though it’s a small little DIY project, I had this idea a LONG time ago and it kept jumping up in the back of my mind for me to do it, so I finally made it happen and now my brain is jumping for joy for checking this off my to-craft list 🙂

Long story short, ever since I opened my Etsy store I get massively excited with every new order, and I still can’t believe I’m doing this. When I first opened it, I told no one, listed two items, and just let the Etsy SEO do its thing, so picture my shock when I got my first order less than a week later! Then, orders slowly started coming in from all over the country and that’s when the idea struck: “I would love to have a cool way to check off every state from the US that I get orders from – and my ultimate goal is to cross off ALL of them! I need a scratch-off map!”

I looked into scratch-off maps online, but I couldn’t find any that I liked, and the ones I did find were pretty expensive, so of course, I decided I wanted to do it myself. Which brings to mind this VERY accurate crafter reality:

In my defense, I already owned everything I needed for this project and there was no additional expense incurred and no animals were harmed in the making of this craft 😀

So here we are, time to list the materials and Six-Step Picstructions to making your very own Scratch-Off Map!

Materials:

– Desired Image (I used this map of the US)

– Photo Paper (bought this HUGE Kodak ream off Amazon)

– Printer

– Laminating machine + pockets (I’ve owned this Purple Cows laminator for forever, also from Amazon)

– Fabric “puffy” paint (I used Tulip brand “Blazin Blue”)

– Silver acrylic paint + paint brush

– Dish Detergent

Six-Step Picstructions

I’m SUPER SUPER SUPER happy with how the map turned out, and so far I have 17 states scratched off (Florida, California, Texas, Georgia, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Michigan, Indiana, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio – East Coast representing strong, but a lot of sales are coming from California so the West Coast has a great presence too!) PS: Hawaii and Alaska are in the back of the page, also ready to be scratched off!

I can’t wait to keep scratching off each state, plus it will make a nice addition to my craft room, and it also came with a bonus US geography refresher for me 🙂 This could also work great as a learning game for kids!

Here is the map with all of the current sales states scratched off as of today’s orders, can’t wait to see all the colors out in the open:

What DIY project has been in the back of your mind lately? What “push” do you need to make it happen?