It’s a good idea to jot
down thoughts every day while traveling. You might remember all the activities
from a specific day and record them later, but it’s harder to capture emotion
and fleeting thoughts more than a few hours later. When I
make a mini-book, I always leave spaces for journaling. You can use labels on scrapbook paper or insert a few blank pages. On our last trip to New
York, we wanted to fit a lot of stuff into our last full day there. If we were
going to fit in coffee at Abraco, noodles at Momofuku,
hat shopping, pie
shopping, the Brooklyn Flea, and dinner with friends, we were going to need a
plan. Along with our hosts, we came up with a schedule for the day while we
were at dinner the night before. I jotted it in my Something to Keep You
Distracted journal, on a page with the prompt “present dreams.” Jenny added illustrations, and also all
of our initials with checkboxes to the bottom of the page so that we could
sign on to show our approval of the plan. We made a rough go of the plan that
Sunday morning and while the weekends’ previous late nights made us pretty
slow, we fit almost everything into the day.
A couple
weeks later in France, I used the same concept on a page I had left blank for
journaling. It was a fun way to practice a new way of lettering I had seen
during our time in NYC. As the day went on, I added notes about each of the day’s
planned events, and whether or not we stuck to the plan. It’s one of my
favorite pages from that album.
Can you
make your daily to-do list visually appealing? Try it!
***I've
decided to run a series on books over the next few days (weeks? until I run
out, I guess). I'll share some of my favorite books to carry around, what
supplies I bring with me on trips, some easy book-binding techniques, and what
inspires my favorite pages.
Feel
free to use any tip or technique I share on the blog in your own work. If you
find a way to make it profitable, by all means, use it. If you really like an
idea that I've shared, I'd love a link back to my blog or the post where I
shared it; if you like lots of my ideas, consider adding me to your blogroll.
If I share something that I didn't come up with myself, I will point you to the
source; if I point you to another website or blog, please be considerate about
how others want their work attributed.If you make something super neat using an
idea from my blog, I'd love to see a photo of it! Thanks and enjoy.***
