If you are preparing for a vacation or find yourself traveling a lot, a travel journal is the perfect way to document the time you spend away from home. This is a place to reflect on the events and activities you take part in, photographs you take and your feelings about your trip. Travel journals are fun to look back on years after your vacation, and are a precious keepsake you can pass on to generations to come.
An altered book journal is a fun project to create to take with you on your trip, and will create a beautiful and creative place to record your entries and display your photographs. Here are some tips and ideas to help you get started on creating your very own altered book travel journal.
1. Purchase an inexpensive hard back book at a thrift store. If you are able to find a book related to travel, especially the location you want to archive, that is preferred, though any plain, hard back book will work.
2. Decorate the cover of the book to create the front of your travel journal. Cover it with pictures of your location or travel themed scrapbook paper. Cutouts from road maps, seashells, patterned ribbon and three-dimensional embellishments are all great additions to consider adding to your cover. Make the cover reflect your personality. If you are adding three-dimensional embellishments, make sure they are well secured so they do not get damaged.
3. Prepare the pages of your travel journal by covering some of the pages with travel themed scrapbook paper. Scrapbook supply stores sell dozens of varieties of travel related papers printed with images of airplanes, ships, maps, postcards, postage stamps and even photos of popular travel destinations. Choose papers that fit the location, theme and feel of your trip. Cover some pages entirely with printed paper, and only portions of some pages. If the book is somehow related to your destination or has passages or quotes that stand out to you, leave the words exposed on the page as you can later work them into your journal entries.
4. Decorate the pages with embellishments such as ribbon, craft gems and paper flowers. Having a beautifully decorated work surface will help you expand your imagination as you begin working in your journal.
5. Include ephemera from your vacation such as airplane tickets, receipts, travel brochures and attraction tickets. These will help you archive every step of your travels and can act as prompts to guide you as you write your entries.
6. Glue in photographs from your trip where appropriate. When you go back and re read your entries, photographs will help you relive the sites you saw and sounds you heard on your trip.
Try to commit yourself to working in your travel journal every day. If you try to wait to record your thoughts, feelings and activities during the trip until you get home, you will not be as passionate in your writing and your memory will not be as fresh.
