A potential Studio guest wanted to see some handmade journals, so l dug out some that I have made over the years. In the process, I found a travel journal that I made back in 2018 following an amazing three-week holiday in Canada and Alaska in honour of our 25th wedding anniversary (and the cashing in of an endowment mortgage policy). I don’t appear to have featured it on the blog before, so here goes:
Travel Journal Construction
It has been quite a while since I made it, but I think it went something like this… Cut out the folding cover from kraft cardstock (probably 300gsm) and softly score the bendy bits. The closure tie is elastic, knotted through an eyelet.
Inside, there are four mini-booklets slotted at the top and stapled together. Through those slots is tied more elastic looped through the spine in a kettle stitch style holding them in place.
Paint the cover with acrylic paints, including some faux ageing and seal with soft-touch varnish for that luxury touch. The faceplate is laser cut and engraved from birch plywood.
The MINI-booklets
Each of the booklets features a separate element of the trip. I popped a tab onto the front cover of each.
Recording the trip
Illustrations, photos, and ephemera go inside each of the booklets…
Keeping the bits and bobs
Make room for mementos from your trip. I slotted a pair of taped-together 3″ envelopes behind one of the booklets and also flapped pockets on the back cover to hold these.
Completing the journal
The basic journal and booklets came with me on the trip, and I created parts of it as we travelled. I did pack a basic journaling kit with pens, a travel watercolour palette with a waterbrush and a glue stick. If you ask a hotel nicely, they may be happy to print out some photos for you to stick in, or plan where photos will go later on. On returning home, I printed and placed all the photos, wrote the captions and completed the illustrations. I raided my stash for the decorative elements to finish off the layouts.
Are you travelling soon?
If you’d like to record your trip creatively, have a look at these ideas from my collection:
- Piano Hinge Travel Journal: American Adventures
- Concertina Travel Journal: Liverpool
- Mini Travel Journal: Maspalomas 2011
- Travel scrapbooking workshop session
And if you are keen to make your own journal or scrapbook memory, but don’t know where to start, get in contact and book in at The Studio 🙂