Checking in on State-Inspired Crafts

In late 2018, about 18 months after I started blogging about travel, I decided I wanted to do a better job incorporating craft blogging (that I'd been doing since 2011) into my travel blogging. I obviously wanted the travel portion of my blog to be helpful to people planning vacations, but I also wanted to create a resource of crafts that teachers, homeschool parents, and others could use with kids to help them learn about the United States. One of my Creative Resolutions for 2019 was to design at least two crafts for each of the 50 states. Turns out, that was ridiculously overambitious. It ended up taking me until March 2021 to meet that goal. 

One of my 2024 goals was to bring the total number of kid-friendly crafts for each state up to at least four. I created a chart so that I could see at a glance how many I had for each state. It was really helpful in keeping me on track and I easily met my goal by the end of 2024. 

I've continued to add craft tutorials inspired by each state to my blog, but it had been a long time since I'd updated my chart. Here's where I am now: 

 

Progress!

Now my top priority is working on crafts inspired by the seven states below the red line. (I should have made it one of my official 2026 goals, but I didn't.) My secondary priority is adding diversity to the states that have multiple crafts about the same topic. Take Oregon as an example. I have 11 different craft ideas on my Oregon Travel page, but 3 of them are beavers and 3 of them are Western Meadowlarks. So it's really more like having 7 ideas, not 11. 

Expect to see a lot more state-inspired crafts coming soon!