DIY Travel Journal - Digital Scrapbook Style

By the time you all will be reading this blog post, I'll be in the sky headed to China to pick up our little girl! I can't believe this is actually happening. We have waited 19 months.

I wanted to take some sort of travel journal with me to keep track of my thoughts/feelings. Plus I wanted it to be able to hold papers, brochures, tickets, etc. that we might pick up along the way. I will definitely be scrapping a book for her but this is something I can do along the way to keep track of certain things I might not want to forget, and I can add some of the stuff from the travel journal to her scrapbook pages.

I searched all over our small town for something I could take with me and I couldn't find anything suitable. Then I began searching online at some of my favorite places: Pinterest, Etsy, google images and I began seeing some DIY journals. Perfect!

Since I'm a digital scrapbooker I went through my stash and gathered some papers and elements that I thought might look cool in a travel journal. 

I used digital scrapbook products from these kits:

Everyday Extraordinary Journaling Bits by Tracie Stroud

Leaving on a Jet Plane by Laura Banasiak and Jenn Barrette

I'm Outta Here by Captivated Visions

Great Escape the Bundle by WM Squared

Great Escape the Journaling Bits by WM Squared

Delightful by Design by Megan Turnidge

I took the different elements and papers and put them on an 8.5x11 canvas in photoshop and printed them and cut them out.

Then I took 3 - 6x9 inch manila envelopes and folded them in half.

Then I took a cereal box and cut two pieces out just the size of half of the envelope.....

...and slid the two pieces into the front envelope so that it would fold nicely and have a sturdy cover.

Then I cut cardstock just the right size to put in between each of the envelopes.

Then my husband came in and decided to be "helpful" and start snapping some photos. Lovely. Now you can see the true me: work out shorts, sweaty (because I had just gotten off the treadmill), ponytail. Yup, that's me pretty much all the time. My kids each made a travel journal too. Although they aren't coming with us, I thought it might be nice if they could journal a little and keep track of what they do while we are traveling.

In this photo, I'm punching holes in my envelopes and card stock.  I punched a hole in the top part of the crease and in the bottom.

Nice. Another photo.

Now my husband is actually being helpful. He took a picture of me tying my book together with twine. 

Then I took my book and glued some of those different papers and elements I printed inside of it.

I took all of those extra elements and stuck them inside one of the envelopes in my book to be able to use later as I journal in my book. I can take the pieces out and glue them wherever and whenever I please.

The front cover.

We are coming to get you, Lydia!

-Liz