Tantarus, thank you so very much for shedding light on that feature. So it was back to the drawing board but this time instead of using the free flowing brush, I needed to draw a path using the pen tool. We still setup our custom brush as I described earlier. If you merely select the Texas map outline and convert that to a path, when you apply the custom brush youll get helter-skelter along the path because the map has too many undulations going in different directions. So what one needs to do is simplify the path.

Drawing with the pen tool on a new layer and the map on the layer underneath, lightening the opacity so that we can use the map as a reference when we trace over it, follow the general shape of the map using as little vertices as possible. This creates the path. Then, using the direct selection tool, the delete anchor point tool and the convert point tool we edit the path selecting and deleting unnecessary vertices and converting all the vertices from corner anchors to bier for a more rounded, smooth appearance.

Having already setup the custom brush and its properties from our prior experiment all you need do is click the stroke path with brush icon located at the bottom of the path palette. If the brush needs altering or you want to select a different brush, hitting Ctrl+Z will undo the stroke, make your changes then click the stroke path again. As Tantarus suggests, uncheck the simulate pressure box. To do this, while holding down the Alt key, mouse click the stroke path with brush icon.