Anatomy of a Travel Journal

It feels like such a long time since I’ve posted. My lovely little grand-daughter has returned home to Texas and life has assumed a state of normalcy….whatever that is. I loved having her and I think she enjoyed herself. Today is her first day of school and I’m sure she had lots of tales to tell! While she was here, I did very little crafting myself, other than making a travel journal for her. It was a really slap dash effort as I wanted her to be able to take it with her, but she was pleased with it in the end, so that’s all that counts.

As for myself, I’ve had “craft withdrawal” – I’m so itching to get my hands moving! So my first project is another travel journal, this one for our cruise to Norway in early August. Since we’re nearing the end of the holidays for many people, and travel journals are quite appropro right now, I thought I’d share a few things if you’re thinking of doing one yourself.

To make it easier, I collect all the ephemera (ticket stubs, mementos, guidebooks, etc.) in one big folder as the holiday progresses..I also keep a daily diary of what we did, where we went, who we saw, and what we thought about it all. You may think you’ll remember, but trust me, you won’t! Then I download the photos from all our cameras to our computer, then send off most of them straightaway for processing. Printing photos on your home computer is very expensive and the big online processors do a better job anyway. I use Photobox, but there are many other good ones. Once you get all that done, you’re ready to start.

First, I recommend choosing 8”x8” for page sizes. This size allows you to use the 4”x6” photos and do a bit of journaling or embellishing with the photos. If you go any smaller, your pages will look crowded and you won’t have room to write much. Once you select your journal size and papers, you can then print out your daily diary (a shortened version is all you need). You don’t have to use the print-out as handwriting is actually preferable, but it will help you sort the photographs into a chronological order. I use a guidebook to help me with spelling and background information on the places we’ve been.

I usually start with an introduction, explaining  about the holiday. In our case, it was a cruise so I gave the name of the ship, the dates, and general area we covered. Here I used our plastic identification cards and a photo from a brochure. The introduction is on the next page.

Then I choose the photos I want to use, and just loosely insert the photos in order (no sticking yet) with the ephemera related to the photos. This gives me an idea of how many pages I’ll need and whether I have enough material for each day of our cruise. When this is done, I start ‘decorating’ the pages: adhering the photos, journaling on the page, etc. After all the photos and related items are in, I go back through and add more embellishments, stamping, tabs, or whatever it needs. Sometimes I add an envelope to a page to hold multiple photos, sometimes I journal on the envelope, sometimes on a mailing label, sometimes on a die cut shape, sometimes directly on the page. Variety is the best approach and makes it more interesting. Use little tabs to pull out, folders to flip up, tags placed at an angle – anything to make the pages more visually interesting.

When I finish this travel journal, I’ll post pictures of some of the pages. There are lots of great examples around on UK Scrappers, YouTube, Two Peas in a Bucket, and many of the craft magazines right now.