March Silhouette Challenge– Wedding Shower Gift Heart Map

This post contains affiliate links, please read our disclosure policy.

It’s that time again! Time for the Silhouette Challenge! This month’s theme is paper. Make sure you stick around until the end to see 43 other inspirational projects.

Now choosing a project to complete for this challenge was actually kind of hard. With paper the options are just endless. Recently I used an old atlas to make cards for a cardswap. When I was choosing pages from the map book I had set aside Massachusetts and Texas knowing that I wanted to do something with them for an upcoming wedding. You see one of my best friends is getting married in July she is from Mass and her fiance is from Texas. With their relationship initially being long distance their states are a significant part of their story.

I decided on a simple design with two sides of a heart cut from the maps of their states. The heart coming together to make a whole.

Disclaimer: You do not need to use a silhouette to do this project but it does make it a lot easier.

At first I chose a random page of the atlas to use as a test and a template. I did this to get the exact positioning needed to include their hometowns within the heart.

In silhouette studio take your heart shape, that you have either have drawn or purchased, and draw a rectangle intersecting with the middle of the heart.

Click on the modify icon to bring up the modify sidebar. Select both the heart and rectangle and click on subtract.

This will give you the half a heart you will need to cut the maps.

Make sure to use the settings of “print paper” since map paper is very thin. The blade should be at a 2 speed at 10 and thickness at 15.

Use your first cut page as a template. The tricky part of this project is positioning the cut right to capture the specific town within the heart. Using the first cut map I was able to figure out where to cut the Massachusetts map to put it in the correct position. This was nerve racking since if I messed up I did not have any duplicate pages for Massachusetts and Texas.

It worked seamlessly. Thank god!

Using a measuring tape (I couldn’t find my ruler) I measured where to place the heart on the center of the page. Since the map paper is so thin I used primarily double stick tape and a little bit of zig paint.

I just absolutely love how this came out. It took me days to find the perfect frame (I actually still have a few sitting in my trunk to return). I found this one at target (30% off this week and if your spend $50 in home decor you get a $10 giftcard).

This gift was originally meant for her wedding shower in June but since Kristine is an avid reader and probably weekend crafts biggest cheerleader I had to give it to her early. And she loved it!

Want to Check Out More Silhouette Projects?

My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so peruse the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!