Travel journal - it's finished!

It's already been 2.5 months since we got back from our summer vacation... Wow. Time flies.
In the mean time I've had the best time piecing together my travel journal. In the end it turned out as more of a mini book filled to the brim with photos and oh yeah, there's some journaling in there too. But since Imre and I both love to take photos, that kinda was to be expected. My book got super thick, and I love every single page.
Here are some of my favourites:

I tried to keep the book chronological, because all of my journaling is. It consists of three parts, and each part has its own colours: the week with Imres family (yellow/green), the week with just the two of us (red/pink) and the week in Taizé (light and dark blue). The different parts are divided by a smaller, square page that has a little washi tag, and says either "with all of us", "with the two of us" or "with a lot of people".
I took pictures each morning I went for a run. Afterwards I wrote a few words about each run, and later accompanied it by a pictured of my feet. So in total I have 6 pages dedicated to my runs.
I used a few designs that keep recurring throughout the book: two vertical 4x6 photos back to back, four horizontal 4x6 photos back to back, and of course I used a lot of stuff I collected on the trip. I used very little embellishments because the book is already so full, but I did fancy things up with some washi tape and a set of stamps. I decided not to stamp on top of the pictures because the cheap ink I have will take days (literally) to dry on pictures. Maybe it's time to invest in some StazOn ink...

I love how my travel journal turned out. It's so thick, full of awesome memories. I showed it to Imres family last week, and it was so much fun to see them flick through it and laugh together over the memories it contains.

Prepping my travel journal

I've mentioned before that I've prepped a travel journal for our trip to Germany and France. If everything goes as planned it'll be filled quite a bit by now, but I want to show you how I prepared my journal. The journal will be written in dutch, so I'll translate what I've written so far. (Oh, and sorry for the bad image quality, these were taken with my phone in baaaad light...)

This is my first travel journal, I've always made photobooks after the event happened. Or at least, I've always wanted to make them, because I just never got to it. So this year, inspired by  a recent post by Amy and an old post by Elise, I decided to try something different. I've got a travel journal ready to go. I won't be crafting the book together during the trip, since we're backpacking (I always have enought trouble getting everything I need into that darn bag). I will definitely be journaling, collecting ephemera along the way, and taking pictures with this journal in mind (which is an enthire new and fun challenge). I hope it will turn out as fun as I have in mind, and if not... Ah well, it's always better than nothing :)

The front and back are made out of a cardboard box I had lying around. I painted them a sort of rusty color, and added 'summer 2013' in dutch, with white paint. Not all cities and towns we will visit are known yet, but we do know we'll start in Medeback, Germany, and end in Taizé, France. So I wrote those on there already, and I'll add the rest after we get back. 

To the inside of the cover I adhered an old map of parts of the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France and even a bit of Switzerland. I had already decided I wanted to add a map, but I found out that the location of Taizé is visible at the very bottom of the map, as well as the rest of our destinations. Awesome. I'll be adding some sort of route on there when we get back. I'm still debating on how, though. 

The first page shows my vacation-manifesto. Since this trip will be a little different from our usual vacations, I decided to write out some 'goals' for this trip. I ended up with ten things I would really like to do in these weeks:

Steefjes Plans

Enjoy

Play boardgames

Take pretty pictures

Read, read, read!

Hike

Run in nature

Time for the two of us

Eat good food

Get to know new people

Make memories

Let's Go!

The rest of the book is kind of boring so far: it's a mix of graph paper, lined paper, cardstock and envelopes. I've divided the trip into three parts using colors: yellow and green for the trip with Imres family, pink and red for the part where it's just the two of us, and light & dark blue for our week in Taizé. 

For each day we're away I've added two pages: one lined and one graph paper. Perhaps I won't use all of them, and that would be just fine. But I figured this way I'll have enough paper if things turn into a journaling frenzy :)

The backside has Albert Heijn wrapping paper attatched to it. I liked its summer vibe :)

 Right now the book is bound by 1 inch book rings. I won't be adding anything but words to it along the way, so for now that's just fine. When we get back I'll be adding a lot of photo's and ephemera I've collected, and I'll probably change the rings to 2 inch or maybe even bigger ones. 

I'm super excited to fill my travel journal with stories along the way, and maybe even more excited to add the photo's and stuff once we get back. Perhaps I'll show the progress in the meantime, but I'll for sure be sharing this baby once it's done!

30 days of lists

So far this year has been all about discovering who I am deep down, what I like and that I want to do with my life. Turns out, prompts to write or list about are pretty darn helpful with that! So I decided to join the gang over at 30 days of lists for the March edition.

The idea is this: every day for 30 days a list prompt is posted, and you can scrapbook, write or in any other way create your list. I use a small booklet that came with my Flow magazine to write my lists in (I posted a pic of it here). When I started writing my first list last Friday, I had no idea whatsoever how I was going to do it. Write, put washi tape all over it, draw, paint, all options were open. Turns out I like the combination of writing and drawing/coloring best. See for yourself!

1. I list because...
* It creates order in my chaos

* I love to check things off the list

* Otherwise I would forget about a LOT of things

* It creates so much space in my head (sometimes)

* It is fun! :)
* It makes me more productive

2. About me...

 ♥ I am me: girlfriend, daughter, friend, niece/cousin

 ♥ I love creative stuff: PHOTOGRAPHY, coloring, sewing, COOKING, writing. ♥ I think I am honest, crazy, complex, sweet (sometimes)

 ♥ I dream of photography, kids, deep conversations, love and family

 ♥ My favorite things are chocolat, team flowers, climbing, yoga, books, my oven, my boyfriend

 ♥ Although I'm not sure yet how, I'll be fine!

3. This   (year)   I will ____
# Get my life back on track
# Find out what my dreamjob is
# Do a real photoshoot
# Learn to sew
# Enjoy the sun
# Run a mile a day for a month
# Decorate our home
# Love myself again
# Go on vacation to Romania?
# Tell my father in law what he means to me
# Turn 2013 into my year!

4. On an average day, I..

* Can't get out of bed

* Take at least one picture

* Have salad for lunch

* Have my phone as my best friend

* Read before I go to sleep

* Cook for my boyfriend

* Clean something around the house

More to come, I'll keep you posted ;-)