Travel Journal

I'm planning another trip to Holland this year to see my dad and step-mom and am excited that my daughter will be travelling with me. She was in Holland once before when she was about 9 or 10. I thought it would be nice for her to have a journal in which she and I could write our experiences, feelings, and memories as well as fill with tickets, sugar packets, coasters, anything that we want to keep to help us relive the trip in the future. We could even do sketches in the journal to give it a really personal feel.

The journal is made of 3 sheets of 18" X 6" watercolour paper. I painted both sides of the sheets with liquid acrylic so that when I put glue on it or want to draw or write on it, it won't fade or bleed as it would with plain watercolour paint.

The 3 sheets folded in half will give us 10 pages plus the
cover and the back of the book

I then added some drawings and glued some dutch stuff onto some of the pages to give them a start so it would be easier to begin writing and adding to it once we are travelling. It is really hard to get started if you are faced with a white page. I think writers have the same problem.

I decided which page I wanted as my cover and wrote the word HOLLAND on it and the year. I then used Inktense Ink Pencils to colour the letters in. These pencils are water soluble and once they are dry cannot be removed or smudged.
To put the journal together I nested the pages, folded them in half and poked holes into the crease of the fold. Using a decorative pencil I bought at the dollar store and some Red, White and Blue embroidery floss, I sewed the pages together using the pencil as the spine of the book. With the left over floss, which I braided, I reinforced the pencil to the spine and added beads to the bottom of the floss for extra decoration.

Voila! Our Holland Journal is ready to pack into our carry-on baggage so we can start filling it out in the plane.