Since we’re leaving for Scotland tomorrow, I’ve been working on putting together our Scotland travel journal.

If you saw my post about our finished Alaska travel journal, you know I had a few specific changes I wanted to make this time around.

Specifically: More flexibility in number of pages and order of the pages.

So, I headed out to our local office supply store and got some big book rings and other goodies to make our travel journal.

Supplies:

• 3 3″ book rings
• 8.5×11″ paper (cardstock, plain white printer paper and graph paper)
• 6×9″ envelopes
• index cards
• pretty little scrapbooky-travel-themed envelopes

I’m kind of a lazy crafter …. I deliberately just chose one of the fastest-to-make sizes for the journal.

Just cut in half all that 8.5×11″ paper … and voila! A handmade book 8.5×5.5″!

[Show as slideshow]

12►

Instructions:

• cut all the paper in half
• punch holes in all the paper (oh my word, this took SO long and killed my hand/wrist!)
• randomize your paper samples
• put it together.

DONE!

I actually pulled out 7 of the big 6×9″ envelopes …. and I am tentatively planning to make those the ‘dividers’ between each day. And then rearrange the rest of the filler paper as needed between each day’s journaling.

For the cover:

• The back piece is just a plain piece of chipboard that was part of the packaging for the 6×9″ envelopes.
• The front cover is a plain piece of cardboard (pulled from the packaging of a wall calendar), cut to 6×9″ and painted gray
• The cover design is my own handwriting, written on first with pencil and then painted over (moderately carefully). I love the look of a hand-drawn thin border to finish off the look without being too over-perfect (see the same border here as part of this post. Also here.)
• The text of August 2011 and the blue little embellishment are also hand-painted. I mixed the paint to get light light gray and the subdued blue to not draw attention from the white white ‘Scotland’

And that is about as decorated as the book is. There is literally NO embellishments of any kind inside the book. Just paper and envelopes.

I’ll show you more inside details once it’s full!

Speaking of, I’m pretty sure this is way WAY more pages than I will need, but since I am using book rings to bind it, I can easily take out the extra pages and use them for a future project or travel journal!

Other prep work includes:

• copying our friends/families’ addresses to one of the last pages for postcard-duty
• adding our flight info and itinerary to the front
• gathering the extra supplies to take with us (adhesive, pens, hole punch, stapler)

I am SO excited to fill this up! And maybe even get the rest of the family we’re traveling with to add a little bit! Can’t wait to see how it turns out!