How To Make Personalized Placemats With City Maps
A cool and easy way to make personalized placemats is to decoupage them with maps of your favorite cities.
Whenever I go on a city break I always come home with a handbag full of free maps. I can't resist them. Even on a day trip to Brighton, which I know really well I still put one of the free maps at the station in my handbag.
I don't even need the maps to find my way around a city as there's an app on my phone for that, but I love the paper maps.
I love looking at them working out where everything is in relation to each other. Maps are my favorite free souvenir.
Simple Upcycled City Map Placemats
The maps I've collected over the years tend to just sit around in a drawer, well I actually keep them in the Map Suitcase I made last year.
I have used some of them in crafts before like with my map chairs. This time I decided that I would use them to upcycle some rather grubby old table mats.
I picked city maps from some of my favorite European cities to upcycle and personalize my table mats with.
The results were a fantastic improvement on the old placemats and made for a great discussion point at the table. As not only do these map personalized placemats look great they spark conversation as we reminisce about our favorite city trips.
(The gorgeous plates by the way are from Anthropologie Nature table range)
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What you need to make personalized placemats
- Old cork table Mats/Placemats - you may have some already that need revamping, or you could pick some up really cheap from a thrift store. You could even make your own from cork tiles.
- Maps - If you don't have a map habit like mine, no fear there are lots of other ways you can get maps of your favorite cities. You can download royalty-free maps from sites like Pictureboxblue, or buy map wrapping paper online. I have a collection of wonderful free vintage maps on Pillarboxblue you can use too!
- Decoupage glue such as Mod Podge
- Heat resistant and waterproof lacquer or varnish.
- Rotary cutter, cutting mat or scissors, rolling pin or wallpaper roller, & ruler.
How to Make decoupaged Personalized placemats
- Clean your table mats/placemats and prime them by coating them in a diluted 50/50 glue to water mixture. This will help the maps adhere better.
- While waiting for the priming mixture to dry, cut out your maps to size. I did this by simply placing my table mat on top of the map and cutting round with a rotary cutter.
3. Next, when the primer coat is dry apply a coat of glue to the table mat, and another one to the wrong side of the map.
Carefully place your map on top of the mat. To eliminate air bubbles, roll over the top of the map whilst sticking it down with a rolling pin or wallpaper roller. You could also use a ruler to squeeze out any air bubbles.
4. Whilst I'm waiting for the maps to adhere to the table mats I usually place them under a weighted object such as a heavy book.
5. Finally, when fully adhered all you need to do is to varnish your placemats. I applied 3 coats of varnish, letting each one dry thoroughly in between.
That's it, I told you it was really easy!
The City Maps I used for my Personalized placemats
The maps I used were from some of my favourite European cities, but I have loads more favourites I just need more maps.
- LONDON Map: I used to live and work in London and still visit regularly. There is so much to see and do in the city I never tire of it.
- PARIS Map: A beautiful city. I first visited relatives there as a child and more recently went with friends.
- STOCKHOLM: It's a fabulous city surrounded by water and has a lovely chilled out Scandi vibe.
- BARCELONA: A city and beach all in one with great tapas and all that inspiring Gaudi architecture!
- BUDAPEST: I visited for the first time last year, and not only was it a beautiful city full of history but it also had a unique party atmosphere and is very cheap.
Which are your favorite cities?
Recently, I made some gorgeous paper angel wings decor for bedroom out of old road maps. I think a map of Los Angeles would be perfect for this project.
There is a fabulous collection of vintage New York maps here that are free to download. I think these would make gorgeous city table mats.
Maps aren't the only things I use to upcycle old placemats. I've also made a set of kitchen patent placemats. There are many more ideas for making placemats here.
If you liked this post you might want to check out some of my other popular map crafts using city and road maps.
- Repurposed Wood Map Ornaments
- Personalised Map Chairs
- Map Luminary Bags
- Map Christmas Crackers
- Beautiful Map Roses
Map Personalized Placemats
Use city maps from your travels to make unique upcycled personalized placemats for your table.
Materials
- Old placemats / tablemats or cork tiles
- City Maps
- Mod Podge
Instructions
- clean mats
- Cut Maps to size
- Decoupage maps to mat
- Seal mats
Notes
For a collection of free vintage maps for this product visit here.
Recommended Products
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wow, love this project and the mats look fantastic with your unique china! thanks so much for sharing on craft schooling sunday!
Thank you very much ! I do love my China !
Claire,
Please tell me about your incredible china. I love it!
Who makes it?
I'm going to make these place mats for my son's new apartment.
Thanks,
Ellen
It's from anthropologie, they do a whole range of them.
Claire, these are so beautiful! And your china is the cutest thing I've ever seen. I wish I had lizards in my dining room. Great map craft - I am very excited to try this!
Thank you ! I love the plates too, I love to eat off them they make the food look special. Good luck with your mats.
Very unique! There are town maps everywhere I go. Now I have a reason to pick them up. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you ! I can't resist picking up those town maps.
Your blog is lovely! I hoard maps too, as well as old atlases. I'm not that crafty, though I have good intentions, but I reckon these tablemats are great. My fave city is New York, which is a city with a great subway map. Thanks for the post. I will be revisiting for more inspiration.
Thank you very much glad you like the blog. New York is a fantastic City ! You can get loads of different wrapping paper with maps of New York on it that would work really well with these mats.
This is so cute. I love maps too.
Thank you !
Your map placemats turned out wonderfully and make the perfect background to those fabulous plates! The colours are coordinated and look so pretty. Would be a great idea to use map placemats for a bon voyage dinner party.
Thank you very much ! Yes they would be good for a farewell or welcome home diner party.
Great idea! I love maps and always have and this is such a great way to use them and love them and look at them every day!
Thank you ! Yes I love to look at them everyday at meal times.
Super cute idea!! My daughters are traveling over your way from the states this summer, and I think I really need to make these to have a send-off party for them. My aunts are taking them to London, Paris, and a few places in between. I wonder if I could find European maps here for a decent price? Love it, thanks so much for sharing on Thursday Favorite Things!
Thanks ! Make sure they pick up the free tourist maps for you.
Great idea!
Cheers !
These look great!
Cheers and thank you !
Wow! What a beautiful map collection you have! It is nice to craft them into something that you can look at every day.
Thank you ! I just love looking at maps for some reason.
Such a creative way to re-cycle maps-AND keep those wonderful memories of your trip alive! Great tutorial too! Thank you for sharing at The Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop! PINNING!!
Thank you ! Yes they're great for memory jogging.
These are amazing! I adore maps and shall be scavenging for the rest of the supplies to make these as soon as possible! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Thank you glad you liked them.
This is so cool! I love maps and actually just tossed one that had been sitting in my craft area for years. Now I think that I need to go pick some up. I love this idea! <3
Thank you ! I can't resist picking up a free map, I have loads of them.
What a fun idea! And what a great way to relive trips (day-long or many days long) whenever you sit down to eat. Visiting from Homemade and Handcrafted.
Thank you ! They are fun to look at and do spark conversation about previous trips.