I admit, I am one of those ambitious brides who is making all of her invitations by hand. I actually enjoyed doing it, too! They’re really nothing spectacular, but I think that they look nice and clean. (Pictures to come at a later time!)
Before I even started making the invitations, I decided that every good invitation needs a good map. Mr. Bean and I had received an invitation where the map was a photo copy from map quest and it was very difficult to read. Given that I like things to look nice, clean and not cluttered I knew that our maps had to be a step up from map quest, yet I wasn’t willing to pay someone else to make one. I reckoned with some basic tracing skills, anyone can make a pretty map!
Step 1: From google maps or your favourite map provider, print of a copy of your map.
This is what my map looked like. Darken any roads or landmarks that are important.
Step 2: Take a blank piece of paper and trace the important roads and land marks. Label each road until you have a drawn version of your map like this:
Scan this drawing and open it in a program like corel, powerpoint or publisher. I used publisher. (Yes! for low-key editing programs!)
Step 3: Using the curve and freeform tool, trace the lines on your map. (Play around with it to get the hang of it – it’s okay if it isn’t perfect the first time.)
Once all the lines are traced in, type in the road and landmark names. Make sure to include the addresses of the venues!
Step 4: Make lines desired thickness. Adjust all text to fit with slopes of roads. Group all the objects together. Scale to the correct size.
Step 5: Print and you’r ready to go!
The final product:
I printed this map with four to a page and it fit nicely in our envelope.
That wasn’t too bad, was it?
Bean's Gotten Married! 