I’m quite a new traveler’s notebook user who just started a year ago. All I’ve been using is only the weekly insert to record my baking routine or track my happymail schedule, until one day, I was gifted a ½ short trip insert (passport size) from a close friend and it totally opened my world of travel journaling. This special insert can only be found at the Traveler’s Factory in Japan so it’s a bit hard to get hold of it if you’re living overseas.
Since I already used the gifted insert for my last Korean trip, I picked a regular blank insert came with the Traveler’s Notebook Olive Edition and made it into my own “Short Trip” insert.
In the 5-day-4-night trip, I carried around my TN in Okinawa and treated it more like a “guide” for me to check out places and what to do next. I’m a kind of person who needs to gather all materials and take out all the supplies (and set a journaling mood?!) before journaling. So it was hard for me to do so especially with a tight travel schedule. Normally it took me about a month’s time to complete a journal after a trip (I hope that makes sense to you…) or sometimes even longer.
17-18 April, the first two days I stayed at Naha
Tips & Ideas for Travel Journaling
Tickets – keep any transport tickets with you, it can be train tickets, subway tickets, ferry tickets etc. They always become special and meaningful materials for putting in your journal. I kept a ticket here from Naha Monorail.
Photo stickers – print photos that you took on the trip in any forms (stickers or papers or instax films). It’s the most direct way to record what you’ve experienced. As I’ve got the Canon Selphy CP1200 printer, I printed them on photo stickers of different sizes.
Papers / notecards – make good use of different textured or patterned papers to create some interesting layers on a spread. I used here the Classiky x Toraneko Bon Bon notecard, Classiky label book and Nishishuku Origami (paper) from The Stationery Selection April’s and May’s boxes. The spread looks so much more interesting than just a plain white background!
Stamps – get some stamps from a nearby post office because they are just too beautiful not getting any! You can use them for mailing a postcard and of course decorating your journal! In Japan, post office releases special edition stamps with amazing designs. They are so lovely, aren’t they?
I bought a total of 3 sets of stamps, left photo shows the Japanese Traditional Colours Set as well as the Mother’s Day Flowers set.
18 April – a spread dedicated to what I ate in a day.
Sketches / doodles – draw or sketch a meal that you enjoyed having. I first sketched with pencil and then later painted with water colours. (yes! If you read my last post, you’d probably know that’s the omelet rice from m o d u l e café.)
Brochures / leaflets – collect brochures or namecards of a shop that you visited. I am always surprised how beautiful those brochures are designed and printed.
Receipts – keep the receipts to keep track of your spending ☺ and for me, they serve one extra purpose – good source of a logo (or the shop name). Like here, I cut out the shop name from a receipt of the book store (ジュンク堂書店) that I visited. It’s super useful especially when you are not confident in writing those foreign characters.
Wax Sealing – use it like decorative glue! You can stick a leaf, a ribbon, a thread, or scrap papers you found related or meaningful. It’s my very very very first time of wax sealing and definitely so much fun going on! Hope you feel the same when you use the Classiky Porcelain stamp and Tokyo Antique wax sticks from our May’s box.
Washi / labels – many of you should already knew how to use washi tapes to decorate your journal and I just want to introduce here the wonderful and cute Kanmido’s Pentone Sticky Film I got at Tokyu Hands. It’s basically 3 rolls of post-it stickies stacked in a pen form. You can pull the sticky films at different lengths and you can also write on it with a ball pen or pencil.
So much in love with this pastel-toned Kanmido’s Pentone sticky film
Hope you all enjoyed my sharing and if you’d like to see more of my journal don’t forget to check out my instagram @Canrie. See you in the next post!♪