Hey there scrappy friends,
Long post alert :)
For a long time I didn't know what to do with or even what to think of Travelers' Notebooks. I didn't look into the topic but often I saw different spreads somewhere in social media. Everybody uses them for different purposes it seems!
For a long time I didn't know what to do with or even what to think of Travelers' Notebooks. I didn't look into the topic but often I saw different spreads somewhere in social media. Everybody uses them for different purposes it seems!
Then we booked our summer holiday, which will be kind of a road trip in the US - we are trying to visit several places while we are there. First of all, I don't feel like I'd survive without crafting for almost 3 weeks. And then I remembered TNs! As in TRAVELERS notebooks! Of course, I could use some for our travels! Cos, you know, I am very forgetful...My dad remembers every single town, restaurant, museum etc we have ever visited, possibly with dates too. Me on the other hand...I don't remember where I was yesterday. At least this way I will be able to remember :).
So when we went on spring break I thought I'd do a test run with the TN. Trying to figure out what works for me, what supplies I should take on summer holiday. I am really happy I did this! I did learn a lot. More about this a bit later.
I figured I could buy an Instax camera and take a picture or two every day and document our activities, which restaurant we liked (in case we ever go back!), what we've seen. I did just that...Bought myself an Instax Mini 70, (God how I hate Amazon! I bought the camera only 6 weeks ago and it was 30 eur more!) in yellow, because obviously the color is the most important thing, ha! In retrospect I wish I hadn't...The camera is a lot of fun to use; watching the picture develop, especially with a kid that knows nothing of Polaroid cameras is kinda cool. Apparently my almost 25-year-old nephew has never seen a Polaroid camera either. Am I really THIS old?!
I love that the Mini 70 has a small mirror for taking selfies - which of course is a whole lot of fun for an 8-year-old! But then most of the photos are just very bad quality. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting a lot, but in a lot of pictures you can barely tell what you should see. Faceless people. Barely there landscapes. No colors! NO COLORS! Of course I took photos of everything with my other camera too, but still, I was very disappointed that the beautiful bold colors we saw everywhere, were just missing from the Instax photos. Anyway, what could I do? I used them for my TN anyway, because I didn't want to prepare the spreads for photos to be added later at home.
I mainly used the super fun Summer Fun collection from Echo Park which I got from Scrapbook Werkstatt, together with various stamps from Studio Calico, SCT magazine, Lora Bailora, just to name a few.
What I've learnt so far:
- I need to take apart the TN inserts and make more, smaller books out of them. These inserts are small but because I add cardstock or patterned paper to pretty much every single page, I wasn't even half way through when the book fell apart...Too bulky.
- Possibly find inserts that have whiter and thicker pages. Then I don't need to add white cardstock or patterned paper to each page.
- I need to take more white cardstock with me. The problem I had was that my pages were very thin and if I had PP on one side, I had to add some to the other side too otherwise the patterns showed through...When I added white cardstock on one page, I didn't have to add one on the other side. Well, I mostly did because I didn't like the cream colored pages. I prefer white. So find an insert with white pages as stated before!
- Taking loads of stamps is a good idea! Since I couldn't really add very dimensional embellies to my pages to avoid bulk, I really liked adding some interest by using stamps.
- I need to take a LOT more adhesive (ATG) - or hopefully buy them locally! With all the craft stores in the US I'm hoping this will be possible.
- I've missed cut files! I will try to cut some smaller ones to take with me next time!
- About the Instax...I totally forgot about the existence of the Instax printer lol! I just saw in my Amazon basket today that I had the SP 1 saved in there from a looong time ago haha! See, I told you I was forgetful...Anyway, thanks to the lovely feedback I got on my Insta feed I decided to buy the Instax Share SP 2 printer . I haven't tried it yet, cos, you know, when some technology is involved (Bluetooth ehh?!) it always takes me time to warm myself up to the idea of trying things when I don't need them right away. And the holiday is still almost 2 months away, ha!
I loooooved working in my TN! I love the small format - if I didn't love 12x12 so much, I would consider using TN for documenting our every day life, kind of like Project Life in a different format. Because it would take up so much less space and would also require a lot less supplies (I will admit at this point that this probably wouldn't hold me back from buying way too much anyway).
Sorry for the long post, I just thought maybe some of you have the same problem I had and maybe you can use some of my experience to decide if TN is for you!
Any questions, shoot!
Laters peeps X
