Recycle Maps

I love maps! When I was a kid I remember my mom had a subscription to National Geographic and they always had some kind of map stuffed inside the magazine. Whether it be prehistoric land mass changes or modern day Australia – they were beautiful and 2 sided.

Our city has a local recycle drop off for newspapers, magazines and cardboard. The last time I was there I discovered someone had dumped a pile of old Geographics. I did what any map loving, dumpster diving, recycling fanatic would do – I grabbed them all. They were pristine. I gathered all the maps that could be found. Saved a few issues for the pictures for collage projects and donated the rest to my favorite thrift store that carries books and magazines.

Recycle maps by using them for:

• wrapping paper
• make envelopes
• school book covers
• wallpaper a wall
• shelving paper
• blank journal covers
• origami
• collage – see map art by Matthew Cusik

Don’t throw out your old maps. If you can’t use them, offer them up on your local Freecycle group – artists love them! Here are some crafts I created:

A map glued to a large soup can. The can was sprayed painted inside with bronze colored Rust-oelum. I used coordinating color nail polish to trim the top edge and wrapped/glued the top edge with natural colored hemp.

The spiral bound journal has laminated maps for the front and back cover. Blank copy paper inside. The box was made by glueing (spray adhesive) a map to a box lid.

Save maps, make stuff, have fun.

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