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Erwan Rivault
@erwanrivault.com

#30DayMapChallenge Day 15: My data Quick fun project: I was curious if the spare coins I had would tell much about me - where i'm from, where i live, and where I’ve traveled... So I stacked all the coins on my table and overlaid a European map, here's what it showed!

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Erwan Rivault
@erwanrivault.com

I have euros (€) from 12 different countries out of the 20 of the eurozone, 4 of which I have never been to. Most of them are from Germany where I went last summer and where a lot of shops are cash only. Second position is Italy where I lived for 3 years.

Erwan Rivault
@erwanrivault.com

I was surprised not to see more euros from France, considering it’s where I’m originally from and I visit at least twice a year. I also mapped my spare pounds (£) as I live in the UK now, and a 10 Moroccan Dirham coin - a little reminder of my holiday there last year.

Erwan Rivault
@erwanrivault.com

Thanks! I placed my phone on a stack of books, took a top-down pic of the table and shared to my laptop, overlaid an SVG of country borders in Photoshop, placed the coins on table, and repeated the process a few times, adjusting the coins slightly until they were all in the correct positions

Erwan Rivault
@erwanrivault.com

I first tried drawing the countries with chalk directly on the table, but I’m not skilled enough! The trick was to mask the SVG borders slightly where coins overlapped or cast shadows for better blending.