Okay… so I was a little overly ambitious when I said I would be back today with a finished travel journal. But today is my last day of my Guest Polly spot and I was really hoping to have a finished book ready to show you before it ended. I did get several pages done and I’m excited to show them to you. I truly enjoy putting these albums together and they go super fast once I get started. I do have to remind myself of their purpose for me though so I don’t go down too many rabbit holes along the way. These journals serve the purpose of laying out the outline of our trip and a place to keep all of the brochures/maps/etc. that I will refer to later when putting together my scrapped albums. It’s not unusual for me to go through my journal page by page as I scrap the trip. So not only is it a project itself, but it is a tool that helps with future projects.
First I have my title page…
I like using a calendar card on my title page, so I know the dates of the trip. The photo below, I had intended to cut out and put on a printed filler card. But I kind of liked it the way it was, and just wrote directly on the photo.
Next up are the pages for our flights…
Mainly photos, a little journaling and one piece of ephemera. This journaling may find itself in my final album as well, but that’s part of the reason I do it. The more details I can get down about the trip while it’s fresh, the better.
After we landed, we went to the Louvre…
This page has more ephemera. I cut up an extra map to make my title card. And I found when I stacked our two entry tickets, they were almost exactly the same size as a journal card, I just had to trim a little off of the top. I included the other map in my journal by putting it in a large pocket page.
After the Louvre, we stopped for crepes in the park and I did a simple little page about that.
Next I have pages about the rest of our afternoon and our evening…
Our rooms weren’t ready when we got to Paris, which is why we went immediately to the Louvre. We were so exhausted by the time they were ready, I was more excited about a hotel room than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I just wanted to write a bit about that in my travel journal so I would have it for later.
Day 1 and 2 of our trip blended together a bit, so this is day 3…
I included another calendar card (I had one printed for each day, in case I wanted to use them) to mark the start of a new day. I had all of our train tickets from that day, so I just stapled them over a dark area on the large photo.
Disneyland!…
This is where it was hard to keep things reined in and not go down a long winding rabbit hole. I try to keep each place we visit and/or activity to a max of a two page spread. All of the details will go into my finished album…. this is where I keep track of the highlights and collect the ephemera (and I do have to say this to myself over and over again to keep on track). There was an urge to go ride by ride through our day, but I had to remind myself that this will come later. Okay… back to my pages. I tried the same thing I did with the Louvre tickets with our Disneyland ones. I had to trim a bit more, but it still worked and I like the way they look in my book. I’m not sure what other designs were being distributed, but I like that we got Mickey & Minnie and Donald & Daisy.
The maps and event program went into another large pocket page. I put the tag from our ornament on a journal card and added a little journaling.
Then my supervisor stopped by to see how things were going…
Back to work and my final spread I have done for now…
The left side is about our train ride back into Paris and the right is about our stop for macarons on our way back to the hotel. I cut the logo from the bag they gave us. I cut it a little smaller than I would have liked, but it’s not too far off. I still have the circular business card to figure out what to do with.
Anyway… although it’s not done, I hope this gives you an idea of how I put my travel journals together. Having my cards pre-printed sure helps things go together quickly. Lots of simple journal cards are key for me! I can’t wait to finish this book and start planning our next trip so I can make another!
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