As promised, here are pics of my handmade travel journal. I decided that I would take an art journal with me on holiday and I’d keep to a plan of drawing/writing daily – after all, I’d have the time! Well, that didn’t quite work out between sun and sangria and nights of cards and local honey rum, but I have finished it:

I’ll be showing the group at the Craft Club on Saturday how to make the journal, and there will probably be a tutorial coming on here later.

Make mini-books from A4 sheets for your signatures

Here’s what I did: the journal cover is made from an old atlas (The Time Atlas 1927), which I gesso’d, stamped and then sealed with spray-on fixative. The title was written on later with Sharpie pen. I stuck down my cardboard cover and spine to this, and then folded it ready for my pages. The pages are A4 sheets suitably decorated and folded into origami-style mini-books, with pockets left in for the tags to slip into. I used three sheets to create three signatures which I then sewed and glued together before sticking to the cover. This means the created book is around 8.5cm wide and 12 cm tall.

Choose a limited colour scheme for your journal

I chose to stick to a limited colour scheme to reduce the amount of materials to pack. The pages are under layered with Antique Linen distress ink, before being aged with Frayed Burlap. Images were stamped in either Frayed Burlap or Weathered Wood. Colour was added with either Sharpie pens or watercolours. Stamps included Tim Holtz, Darkroom Door and Woodware clear stamps.

What to pack for your travels

I packed a mini-bottle of matte multi-medium, a pair of scissors, glue stick, watercolours, water brush pens, Sharpies, pencils and paper stump. I wish I’d packed a paintbrush and my tweezers. Work done on return: image transfers onto the tags and a couple of pages. Resources gained while away: tour leaflets, bus tickets, and a bit of sand from the beach (which I still need to add, but plan to encapsulate in Glossy Accents dimensional fluid.

Definitions:
Folio – a sheet of paper forming a single page
Signature – a collection of folios, a set of signatures forms the book
Holiday – a period of time when it’s ok to break self-imposed rules 😉