Art Journal: American Adventures [Travel Journal]

Posted on 28th March 2017 by perfectly4med

It’s taken some time, but I’ve finished the journal I handmade last year and finally got round to taking and editing the photos of the finished article. I intended to journal each day before going to bed, but got a little behind whilst in New York as our room was so small that there was actually nowhere to work on a flat surface, and there was no communal area I could use either. Consequently, by the time I got to Boston, and there was space to work, I was already five days behind. Then life on the road for the final few days also meant I was doing other things at the end of each day. So it meant finishing off the work once I got home, but that brought back good memories of a lovely, and much needed, holiday.

As a format, the piano hinge worked very well – I was able to slide out each of the sticks in turn to work on the pages individually, which was far easier. The fold out sections added a little more space, and the wallets somewhere to put the various bits of ephemera that I collected along the way. With techniques from collage to napkin decoupage, hand drawn typography to watercolour illustrations, it was fun to put together. I would have liked to do more urban drawing, but for speed, mini-photos had to suffice.

Sit back, with a cuppa of your choice, and holiday vicariously as you work through the journal 🙂

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Art Journal: Piano Hinge Travel Journal

Posted on 1st December 2016 by perfectly4med

For my next trip abroad, I wanted to make another travel journal. I have previously handmade a small hardback pocket journal and a fold-out accordion journal. This time I decided to make a handmade journal using a piano hinge. This, for the unfamiliar, uses tabs and cylindrical objects (in this case bamboo skewers) to attach the pages at the spine. The benefit for a travel journal is that every other spread is the depth of the bamboo skewer, which means there is plenty of room for additional items of collage and other ephemera, and pockets to store memorabilia. It’s also possible to easily disassemble the book at the hinge to work on individual pages, or remove and add pages as required.

Constructed from canvas textured acrylic paper, I knocked back the white using an off-white chalky finish acrylic paint. I added a darker shade at the base of each page, using the same paint to stencil the building outlines. Overprinting with various travel oriented stamps using archival ink completed the decoration. It seems that the convention for piano hinge books is that the spine is visible, and the skewers extend from the bottom and the top. I wanted a more traditional book appearance as well as a protective cover, so I constructed cover pages before covering them with lokta paper which resembles old leather. A few coats of soft-touch varnish added to that illusion as well as protecting the paper. Adding this type of cover does restrict the addition of further pages. As I intend to use this on the flight as well, I thought it wise to trim the skewers… Some care needs to be taken to keep the pages vertically aligned, but in practice friction seems to keep the posts in place.

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Art Journal: Travel Journal [Wanderlust]

Posted on 12th January 2016 by perfectly4med

This week’s class on Wanderlust (a year long course encouraging art journalers), we’ve been shown how one artist, Kate Crane, creates her own journal to fill in as she travels. Here’s my take on the project. Using two sheets of 12×16″ watercolour paper, I created the concertina pages, incorporating pockets into the overlaps. I’ve chosen to create faux leather straps to hold it together, rather than ribbon, and have made these from Grungeboard. Lots of layered DecoArt Media paints and interference paints over some embossing paste create the cover decoration, and the pages are covered in Distress Paints, DecoArt Media Titan Buff and Quinacridone Gold fluid acrylics and gesso applied through a couple of stencils. Now it’s ready for filling with travel goodness 🙂

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Another Travel Journal (for Jones Crafts)

Posted on 14th February 2014 by perfectly4med

Another travel journal using the fabulous Now Boarding Collection from Kaisercraft. This journal makes use of the fantastic Zutter Bind-it-All, also available from Jones Crafts, which allows you to punch and bind your own wire-bound items with one machine. Using larger wire diameter than necessary allows this album to have all sorts of things added without straining the spine, as well as giving somewhere for the tags to be tied. I’ve laminated the covers just to give them more strength and longevity, as well as protecting the contents as well.

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Handbound Travel Journal (for Jones Crafts)

Posted on 10th February 2014 by perfectly4med

This handmade book features Kaisercrafts’ fabulous February release of the Now Boarding Collection, and includes more than enough space for your journaling, photos and ephemera. Why not make one before you go on your next holiday and fill it in while you’re there?

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Travel Journal – journaling prompts for when your brain is on holiday

Posted on 19th August 2011 by perfectly4med

Just thought I’d share some of the journaling ideas I had whilst I was filling in my travel journal.

Numbers – decorate your page with relevant numbers and a brief comment – I used the flight number, the weight of my suitcase, how many miles it was to my destination, in-flight meal prices, taxi pick up time etc
Top Tips – list all the things you want to remember for next time you go on holiday or the things you would tell people coming to the same area
Menus – sketch your food for the day, then describe it: we had ‘brown’ several times during our stay – it was either coffee or chocolate mousse, but occasionally we’d be caught out with the hazelnut variety!
Guide Book – if you get stuck for ideas, raid your guide book and any handy tour leaflets for facts and pictures or maps and pop them into your journal
Logos – I drew the logo that was on the beer glass every evening, and stuck in a section of the honey rum bottle label… the things you want to remember!
Mini-maps – annotate a mini-map of your area, or the route to the beach, with the things that were memorable or significant landmarks along the way
Write larger – if you only do eating, sunbathing and swimming, it may not seem to be enough for a journal page entry… so write larger and decoratively, it soon fills the page!