The Minibook That Travels Too

This is a guest post from team member Delanie Wood.

I love traveling, but coming home and sitting down at my scrapbook table facing hundred of photos, piles of memorabilia and scraps of notes is quite overwhelming. Where do you start?

Before each of my last few trips I’ve created a minibook that comes on vacation with me and that I work on while traveling. I’d love to say this means I now get home and in a couple days the trip is entirely documented and the minibook complete. Ah, no. Pesky laundry, work and real life tends to get in my way. But it does mean I arrive home with a plan, minibook foundation, memorabilia added and much of my journaling already complete.

There are lots of preassembled options that could work for this type of project – daybooks, Capture journals, minibooks – but I prefer the flexibility of creating my own minibook using album rings so I can add and rearrange pages to suit. The cover needs to withstand the rigors of travel, being pulled in and out of bags, so I like to use chipboard or thick transparencies. For the same reason, it can be a good idea to save the cover embellishment and decoration for post-trip.

When searching my supplies for papers to use, it’s neutral colors and lined patterns good for journaling on that I prefer. Another option would be selecting brighter patterns and adding journaling cards or tags on top. The pages can be as plain or decorated as suits you. I like the colors in the memorabilia and photos to pop so I simply stamped some travel sentiments in a neutral ink.

As my aim while traveling is to capture memorabilia and journaling, not arrive home with a completed album. I don’t take many supplies. Journaling pens, hole punch and scissors are top of the list. I also like to include some washi tape and small letter stickers or an alphabet stamp set for adding titles. All this can fit in a small pencil case, along with a ziplock bag or two for protecting the minibook and memorabilia.

I think the biggest advantage of these minibooks, and my favorite part, is the journaling. It is authentic, in the moment and done. I’ll often take a few pages out of the minibook and carry them with me during the day, writing snippets as we wait for lunch or a train. I love recording quotes from travel companions, observations of a place and writing lists. It’s also easy to hand a page to a travel companion and have them write a few words, adding their perspective.

Arriving home, the story of your travels is already recorded with journaling and memorabilia. You could call the minibook complete and move on, just add a few highlight photos or embellish and add till the album is bulging. There are so many options with this type of project, and I’m learning and refining my process each time.

If you’d like to see more of my travel minibooks, I’ve shared a video look-through here and more photos and thoughts on my latest minibook here.

Have you found a travel scrapbook method that works for you?

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