Minibook: Everything We Ate in China

Tags

beijing, beijing shopping, china, china travel, china vacation, craft project, craft projects, hong kong, scrapbook, scrapbooking, scrapbooking vacation, shanghai, travel, travel journal, traveling, vacation, vacation album, vacation journal, vacation pictures, vacation scrapbook, vacation shopping, vacation souvenirs, xi'an

I’ve never made a mini-book before.  Funny, right?

I wanted to do some sort of fun project about all the food we ate on our trip to China.  I started by taking a picture of everything we ate, beginning on the plane ride.  Mr. P and our friends were gracious in not touching anything on the table until I got a shot of it – they even reminded me to take photos!

Shopping in Beijing, I found this awesome little book.

I printed the food pictures as 2-inch squares when I got home, and then left a 1/8-inch white border when I cut them out.

I was a little concerned that the thickness of all the photos was going to mess with the binding of the book, but the finished product is actually pretty cool!

I sat in front of the TV with these supplies and went to work.

I used a date stamp to stamp each page with the date the meal corresponded to.

Then I taped in each picture and wrote a few words.

I also wrote divider pages for each city we were in.

Not bad for a first attempt?  I like how minibooks have an effortless look, so I hope I succeeded.

I’ve included a bunch of pages below so you can look at them.  I used over 80 photos, so this is just a sample!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

My New Travel Journal

Tags

craft project, craft projects, scrapbook, scrapbooking, scrapbooking vacation, travel journal, vacation journal

Somebody has a vacation coming up.  *Wink wink*

Last year I posted about how and why I keep a travel journal.  It is a very simple low-impact way of keeping a record.  I haven’t scrapbooked that vacation yet but I’ve consulted the journal more than once to remember what we ate.

For a complete tutorial on how to make your own travel journal, visit my travel journal tutorial.

This year I was super pressed for time and cut corners by getting heavy patterned cardstock.  This means I skipped the step of gluing the patterned paper to plain cardstock.

The cardstock is Perfect Posies from the 29th Street Market Line from My Mind’s Eye.  I picked it up at Michaels on Sunday.  I’m not much for distressing and cut the journal cover from an un-distressed area.

Using patterned stock made this super quick.  I was running out of time to make this and threw it together.  It only took 15 minutes!  Okay, it was probably around 20 because Mr. P made me a margarita and I was enjoying that while finishing it.

Don’t forget to visit my travel journal tutorial for complete instructions on how to make a travel journal!

Make Your Own Travel Journal

Tags

craft project, craft projects, scrapbook, scrapbooking, scrapbooking vacation, travel journal

Earlier, I talked about how I learned to keep a no-frills travel journal and how I found the perfect little notebook while I was in Paris.

Now I want one exactly like it for every trip I take!

Instead of scouring the stores, I realized I could make my own for next to nothing!

Keeping a Travel Journal

Tags

scrapbook, scrapbooking, scrapbooking vacation, travel journal

How do you keep track of your travel memories?

The husband and I took a two week vacation to France last year. Friends asked if I was going to write a travel blog during the vacation. Nope, I didn’t want to spend any time writing when I could be eating baguettes.

Still, how am I going to remember everything?

I will always remember what it felt like to stand on Omaha Beach in Normandy. But how will I remember what we did each day? Will I remember the names of the places we ate?