Have GPS? New Uses For the Atlas!

With GPS and smart phones guiding our road trips nowadays, there's hardly a use for road maps. I used to love studying the road atlas on vacation, planning each evening the best route for the next day. Today, it's all done for us but there are plenty of ways to incorporate the look of the road map (which also happens to be very cool-looking) into the home:

If you have any old atlases stuck under your car seat collecting dust due to GPS favoring, and if you have memories tied up in them like I do, consider a DIY project that honors them! Decoupage is perfect for this application. Think furniture, walls, wearable art, you name it!

Images: Budgetwise Home, Domestic Ease, Craftzine, Post Script, Paperelle,

Comments (12)

How do you get the paper to wrap so neatly aorund the corners?

Don't throw the map out yet. GPS devices though convenient, are not perfect replacements for maps. Plus GPS systems can malfunction without warning, something I discovered one holiday weekend a few years ago. Without a map in the car, I would have been clueless.

When the map gets old though, they make very interesting framed art.

Would love to see a tutorial.

yea, I wouldnt be so quick to rip up all my maps either. GPS systems are so easily knocked out of service just as any other electronic/satellite gadget...

Until your GPS lands you in a dead end street, in a campground, or stops working altogether. All have happened to me.

I still keep my atlas handy.

Really love the 4th table and the 5th bracelet. Do you paper mache these maps to stay put?

So "plenty of ways" include decoupage, decoupage, or decoupage?

I'm assuming this refers to street directories that have definitely passed their used-by date, and not the most current one? (Seriously, family member that shall remain unnamed, there is no reason to have four street directories. REALLY.)

Love that first one!

I agree with those cautioning against ditching paper maps altogether. There was a story on NPR yesterday about people getting into serious trouble with their GPS in Death Valley. One person died.
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/26/137646147/the-gps-a-fatally-misleading-travel-companion

I love this new trend to decoupage maps onto furniture, we covered an old lack table we were planning on throwing our with an atlas from 1943 that we got off ebay, check it out:http://madeinmorningside.blogspot.com/2012/01/side-table-revamp.html, there is even a tutorial for you Activate. Hope you like it!!