as you saw from my last post, dek and i went on a crazy, fun 2-week adventure around bali and in order to keep the memories fresh and get them to last longer than our minds could keep the colors and images crisp, i decided to make a bali vacation scrapbook. we don’t really keep any photo albums around our home, so i figured a more creative way to remind us of our trip, like a scrapbook, could be something we keep on the coffee table or in our living room bookshelves to flip through and relive that experience.
below are 5 tips i followed to plan out & execute my scrapbook that i thought could be helpful to you if you ever want to do something like this for a trip you take.
5 tips for travel scrapbooking:
1. collect things
do this throughout the whole trip. things like plane tickets, receipts or napkins from restaurants, mementos from places you stay or visit, tags from things you buy, etc. also try to photograph the small things that will help remind you of the details of the trip, this could be the sky that day, the sign in front of the hotel, your shadows on the sidewalk, etc.
2. print photos like a crazy person
once you are back from your trip, print tons of photos…more than you think you will need. i always end up cutting my photos down so it helps to have more than less. i would also recommend organizing them in chronological order, not mandatory, but this is how i did it
3. use magazine cutouts to bring it to life
gather a few old magazines and look for fun phrases and words that help describe your trip and backgrounds that are relevant to your trip that you could glue the images you printed out on
4. buy a scrapbook and inserts
i got mine from hobby lobby (here it is) and i specifically wanted one with 10 pages so the entire book could be 20 flipable pages. i also recommend colorful insert pages (like these) to glue the images and magazine cut-outs on, these pages are slightly thicker and more durable than like printer paper, but that could work too
5. plan out how you want to tell the story of your trip & how many pages you will need
if you get a scrapbook with a set amount of pages, you will probably want to fill them all up, if you want to leave some empty that’s fine too, but this step will ensure you plan a little bit more upfront so that execution would be seamless. you probably want to start this project on a large surface and maybe even put newspaper or something under your stuff so you don’t get glue on your table. my suggestion would be to layout your designs on the pages and try to see that you have every page accounted for with “content.” i like to have the pages balanced in terms of business, so it doesn’t seem like the photos or pages become sparse as you get to the end because naturally it’s easy to front-load, but it needs to have a good flow. when you are finally ready to create your pages, use a glue stick to put everything in place and once the glue has dried, slide the completed pages into the protective clear plastic sheets in the scrapbook
& voila! you’re done!
have you created a travel scrapbook? i think i will make one for our upcoming costa rica trip, too!
