Not even the distance can separate us

One of my friends is getting married this summer, I was at a total loss as to what to do for her for her bridal shower... until looking around Pinterest I found a link to an Etsy store that was doing maps of different states and I thought I could apply the same basic concept, but using two countries rather than two states.
 I also decided that instead of hearts, to use a heart lock and a key, and to add in some text so it wasn't just a blue background.

Anyways, not super complicated if you're looking to try this for yourself!
What you'll need:
Outlines of the countries that you're wanting to work with (I traced images in AutoCAD)
Desired images to mark each person's current city of residence
Basic photo editing skills
Photo editing program (I used gIMP, because it's free)
Word processing program (I used Microsoft Word)

Directions:

• Create .png files of the countries, and locating marking images. Make sure that they have transparent backgrounds associated with them so you don't have a white box around the image when you place it into Word.
• In Word, set the page background to be your desired color.
• Add in your .png image files and set them to having text going over the image, don't be afraid to try a bunch of different layouts!
• Add in any text that you want showing
• Add in the line objects (the red dashes shown above)
• PDF and voila!

I had also thought about doing this as a pillow (similar to my trip pillow from a previous post). I still might... we'll see how much free time I can find myself!