Hey there, Foxy friends! It's Kristine with you again, and today I want to share with you how I used my Foxy notebook, inserts, and stamps to create a simple but very useful travel planner and journal. I was lucky enough to go on a two-week European vacation this summer, and armed with my Foxy notebook and a few easily portable supplies, I was able to create a planner and memory book in one.
The first thing I did to get me into the vacation mood was create a dashboard for the front of my Grand 8 Marina FN. I used floral and banner stamps from the Foxy Elements stamp sets (these were on pre-order and you may not see them on the site right now, but they will be in stock soon!) and colored them lightly with watercolors. The pockets inside the front cover of my FN held papers and odds and ends that I wanted to get to quickly - the business card for our hotel in Rome, a boarding pass for one of our flights, and the birthday card I got from one of my traveling companions, to name a few. I used the back of the FN and dashboard to collect more items - receipts, brochures, etc. It was great to have a place to stash these items where they were out of the way, but neatly organized for me to go through when I got home.
I chose a blank Foxy Fix insert to use as my planner/journal, and decided to decorate the cover of it so that when I put it on my bookshelf after my trip, I'd be able to easily know what was in it. For the decoration, I used the Column 1, Column 2, and Rectangle stamp sets to create an abstract design in white ink, then used white and gold colored pencils to shade the shapes and give some depth. The banner is from one of the Elements sets.
For the main trip planning part of this project, I spent a couple of hours in the weeks before we left setting up pages for each of the cities we were going to visit on our trip. I set up the first page for each city the same way. Here's what those pages looked like before we left:
I used one of the floral border stamps in the Elements set to create top and bottom borders for each page, using a different color for each city just to make it fun. (In the example above, Stockholm's pages are blue while Copenhagen's pages are yellow.) Once the top and bottom borders were done, it was time to add some actual functional planning items. Under the name of each city, I stamped two boxes with corner banners using the Rectangle Set and the Line Set - I titled the left box "Get There" and the right box "Stay There." Then I wrote in our flight or train details and hotel name and information. I also indicated the dates we'd be arriving and departing each city. (The little plane and house icons are from one of the Elements sets.) I added another floral border under the dates.
Under the transportation and hotel section, I wrote how to get from the airport or train station to the hotel, then listed the activities we wanted to try to do in each place. I used one of the small squares in the Square Set to make check boxes, and while we were on the trip, I checked off the items we managed to do.
After that initial overview page was done, I left several pages blank for journaling (except for top and bottom floral borders) before making the overview page for the next city. (See the Copenhagen overview page above - the left side with the blue borders is the last page I left blank for the Stockholm section.) Each night in the hotel before I went to bed, I spent about 20 minutes writing down what we did that day and impressions of the city we were in. To really jazz it up without a lot of effort, I printed out 3 or 4 photos from my phone with my Polaroid Zip printer and stuck those in as I was writing.
In my carry-on bag, I brought a small Tombow adhesive roller, so I was able to add all sorts of things to my journal besides the Zip photos (which have a sticker back) - receipts, tickets, brochures, business cards, you name it. There were days when I was tired and really didn't want to spend those 20 minutes journaling, but in the end, I'm so glad I did! When I got home, I took all those miscellaneous items out of the FN and dashboard pockets - I glued the ones I wanted to keep into the back of the insert (I had several pages left over) and threw the rest away. I now have a record of my trip that was easy to make and is fun to look back on, and I didn't have to spend hours after I came home going through photos or trying to remember what happened each day of the trip. I love to travel, and my hope is to have a whole row of these on my bookshelf to be able to look back on and enjoy.
I hope this has inspired you or given you ideas for using your Foxy notebooks to make your own travel journals. Thanks so much for reading today, and do let me know if you have any questions!
Happy traveling!
Kristine
Happy traveling!
Kristine
1 comment on this post
What colour is this?!?!?!?
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