About Happy Place Maps
At the core of Happy Place Maps lies a tale as chaotic and colorful as a room full of toddlers armed with crayons—a story of family, adventure and a few sacrifices along the way.
This is
Happy Place Maps
Specializing in creating personalized art maps, we capture YOUR adventures in YOUR style to:
- Spark a memory and a smile, or
- Inspire future dream adventures.
Whether your thing is light and airy watercolor, vintage-inspired vibe or modern and minimalist, our collection offers something for every traveler’s taste. Personalized wording, a fave travel quote, family names and bespoke map keys are just some of the ways we make your map one-of-a-kind.
Hi!
I’m Katrina | Map Designer & Founder
Creativity and design have always been my Happy Place … and thinking back, maybe my map nerdy-ness stems from my childhood. While other 7-year-olds were happy with coloring books I used lunch-wrap paper to trace maps from my class atlas so I could recreate them to proudly display around the house. I was so lucky!! … those poor people at the atlas company obviously didn’t have as many colors in their box of pencils as I did. 🤣
After working internationally and traveling much of the world with my husband Craig, it was time to return home. Soon after, I pressed pause on the demands of my professional career for the wild ride of parenting, where every day brings new surprises and sticky situations.
It was in the delightful messiness of life with 4 kids under 5 years old, that this little business blessing was born.
With years of graphic design experience, the map-geek in me came to the surface again when I started designing personalized maps for family and friends as gifts. I was encouraged to open Happy Place Maps and in 2012 I sold my very first map. It was a very pretty aqua and gray custom map of New Zealand (sigh!).
Ah, it’s like the first love of my map-making journey—always remembered with a smile.
With the help of amazing USA-based printers/framers and development of modified archival backing-designs my maps could now become “pinnable” push-pin maps - great for tracking past travel adventures and bucket list locations.
With every map I make, I'm picturing its new owner living their best life: exploring new places, making memories and...
… probably getting lost once or twice but in the most fun way possible!
Choose from
