The holiday season is well and truly upon us and after my dabble into pocket scrapbooking a couple of weeks ago I thought I'd have a go at making a Travel Journal..... I was inspired by one produced by an overseas retailer who don't sell in the UK so thought I'd have a go at making one from scratch...
The three journals are quite easy to make using thin card, the finished books are 4" square and are literally four pieces of card folded in half...
There are so many different tutorials online on how to bind these books, they can be sewn or stapled... I liked the idea of punching the holes and using thread to tie the pages together. One of the books has a mixture of pages inside... I even used a sheet of vellum for something different...
I kept the embellishments simple on the front of the books and kept the same colour theme but each one is different. I used Smitty's ABC's embossed in white on black card to make the titles for each book... I like the faux label look it gives :)
I used one of the Slim Tag Trio dies with a piece of natural coloured canvas and layered a scalloped frame and globe from this paper pad.... cutting out images from patterned papers is a great way to embellish journals :)
Those cute little cameras are from a different paper pad by Echo Park and luckily they were a good match with the colour scheme :) The word die is from Paper Smooches Documented dies... they make titles so much easier.
Another useful die set is the Cardbooking dies from Paper Smooches, as the name suggests they span both cards and scrapbooking... I used the arrow and quotation marks to embellish this book.
I'm pleased with how these little books turned out and my daughter is after them... she likes to fill journals with photos from her adventures.
To house the books, I cut two pieces of felt at approx 10x5" along with two pieces of interfacing and a piece of Heat'n'Bond all the same size. I backed both pieces of felt with the interfacing using a warm iron and then used the heat'n'bond to stick them together. I used the wool setting, no steam, and placed an old hankerchief on top before applying the iron in a pressing motion rather than rubbing it over... oh and dont forget to protect your ironing board just in case you get any glue residue on it!
When it was all stuck together I trimmed the whole piece to 9½ x 4½" and rounded the corners. I punched holes and set eyelets for the elastic binding... the two outer holes need to be set apart the same width as your journals and one in the centre for the elastic closure. The cover should bend a little when the elastic binding is in place, this will mean your books stay snug and safe inside the cover :)
I joined the first and third book together with a separate loop of elastic and then threaded them under the longest piece of binding in the cover, then I slipped the second book in place under the the longest binding too... hope you can see that in the bottom left photo above :)
Here are the links to the products I used
Apologies for such a long post with lots of photos but hopefully they convey how I made the journal.
It was such a fun project to make and I think they make a great gift idea for family holiday snaps or the intrepid traveller alike :)
Thanks for stopping by
Jenny x
Wow that's awesome! x
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