Grenada vacation journal: how I used it

In my first post about this vacation journal, I showed the blank journal and the little kit of items that I brought with me on our anniversary trip to Grenada.  In this post, I’d like to share a bit about how I actually used it while we were there.

I had hoped to use some of the 12 hours(!) of travel time on our way to Grenada to catch up on my photos (read about my workflow HERE), but when I discovered that my laptop battery had died and that there was no way to charge it on the plane (boo), I pulled out my journal to get started right away.

in-flight entertainment: my travel journal and kit. snack (including the whole can of Dr Pepper! Score!!). good book.

Obviously there wasn’t a lot to write about yet!  But I think it got me off onto the right foot for documenting the rest of the trip.  (The rest of the traveling time, I read and colored in a grown-up coloring book…)  Before we started the trip, I hadn’t thought much about how I was going to lay out the journal, but as I worked on it on the plane, I was able to do some thinking and make some decisions.  Right away, I realized that I didn’t want to do too much embellishment ahead of time, and I also decided that I would leave a lot of space for photos among the hand-written text I’d add.

Once we were actually at our destination, I ended up writing in my journal every day!

Yes, I worked on my journal at the beach.

It turns out that you really do have a lot more time when you don’t have kids with you!  Haha!  While I definitely enjoyed just watching the water, soaking up the silence, walking, reading, and generally just being happy on the beach, there was still plenty of time for pulling out my little journal+kit and recording everything that we’d been up to.  I have no idea how long I spent on it each day, but I did add a little embellished date header for each day, and wrote as many details as I could remember.

I didn’t set out to write prosy entries– I thought it would be more bullet-point type of lists, but it turns out, prose is faster for me to write!

Unfortunately, the three colored pens I’d purchased and had hoped to use for this journal were dry!  I knew that one of them was dry before the trip, but I had thought that the other two were working okay. Not so.  Bummer.  I had also brought a black Project Life 0.05** pen with me, intending to use it for doodling or titles or something.  It ended up being my main writing instrument.  It wasn’t a huge deal, but I definitely would have brought a finer-tipped pen if I had known!

It was exciting to have such a complete journal right at the end of the trip!  I had the luxury of an on-plane power outlet for part of the trip home, so I did a lot of photo-processing for much of our travel time (It took away the sting of leaving such a beautiful place and such a relaxing vacation by being able to re-live the memories, haha!).  However one of our planes didn’t have an outlet, so when my laptop battery inevitably died (it’s getting old), I pulled out my journal, finished up the writing for the last day, and started trying to add a few bits of ephemera.

After my laptop battery died, I worked on finishing up my travel journal entries. GND-MIA.

 

I thought about adding some photos of the journal pages, but there are so many that I thought that maybe a video might show it a bit better.  So, here it is– my very first YouTube video ever.

&

**seriously, what are the units on pen tip measurements?  My science-background brain is twitching over not having units after that number right there…

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Vacation travel notebook and kit

Husband and I just got back from vacation celebrating our tenth(!!) anniversary.  He treated me to the most wonderfully luxurious week for just the two of us in Grenada!

When I was preparing for the trip, I knew I wanted to bring some sort of journal along.  When we went on our honeymoon, I deliberately did not keep a journal, because I just wanted to enjoy the trip… however, I immediately regretted it.  We ate some phenomenal food on that trip, and I didn’t have any record of it (it was before I had large memory cards for my digital camera, and at that time, taking photos of your food wasn’t really a “thing,” anyway!).  I planned to scrapbook the trip, so we did take as many photos as we could, but I have forgotten many of the details (it was before I even knew about metadata!)

This time, I was determined to have a written record.  I decided to make my own notebook (goodness knows I have enough paper in my craft room!), and I followed my own tutorial to construct the book.  The only variations were that I used my long-arm stapler to bind the pages into the cover, and I used lightweight cardstock for the pages rather than printer paper, since I knew I’d be doing a little stamping and using felt-tip type journaling pens–I didn’t want to have to worry about bleed through or ghosting.

 

To embellish the cover, I pulled out some very old Studio Calico alphas and layered them on a journaling card from the June Cocoa Daisy pocket scrapbook kit (thank you, Cocoa Daisy! — I won this kit in the iNSD giveaway on the Scrapbook and Cards Today blog).  I added the “adventure”** die cut with my Silhouette from Ali Edwards’ Pinterest Passport freebie series earlier this summer– it was cut from kraft cardstock, but I colored it with a blue permanent marker to give it the navy color.  I added the date stamp, a little piece of washi tape, and a few enamel dots to finish it off.

I also had the idea that perhaps it would be fun to have a little scrapbook-y kit along, just in case I decided I really wanted to do some crafting while I was away.  After all, papercrafting is one of my main passions!

I gathered some supplies.  I added some stickers from the Clementine Project Life kit, as well as some other random bits and bobs I collected from my scrapbook stash.  I also added a roller date stamp, the stamp set from the Cocoa Daisy kit, and my black ink pad.  I learned a trick from Online Card Classes’ chat with Kathy Racoosin that you can use the lid of an ink pad as an acrylic stamp mount!

I wound some lengths of washi tape around a Project Life card (from the yellow baby edition, I think!) so that I could have a large variety without the bulk of all the rolls.

I chose some die cuts from the Cocoa Daisy kit and turned them into “stickers” by adding

adhesive and placing them onto some plastic packaging.

I cut some more of Ali Edwards’ Pinterest Passport files with my Silhouette and turned them into “stickers” as well.

I fitted all of my embellishements into this cute Craftmate Folio by Webster’s Pages (thank you, Megan!).  It seriously was the perfect size to pack in my bag and carry to the beach (but more on that in a later post!….)

I used another little zipper pouch to carry my journaling pens and a small pair of scissors (I put the scissors into my checked bag so that I didn’t have to worry about them as I went through airport security).

Even though I went to all of this trouble to assemble a little kit, I really gave myself permission NOT to use it if I didn’t end up wanting to do extra crafting.  It was just plain fun to put the kit together.  At the very least, I wanted to have one place where all of my notes could be jotted each day.  At the best, this journal could become its own little scrapbook-y record of the trip!  I didn’t place any expectations on myself other than writing some facts about each day.

In a future post, I’ll let you know how I actually ended up using the notebook!

 

**Really, “adventure” might be a bit strong of a word– we went to a lovely resort with the expectation of lazing on the beach for the majority of the time.  We did do some fun activities, but “relaxation” or “vacation” probably would have been a better word choice.  But I had this cute png from Ali… 😉

Supplies:
cover: kraft cardstock-The Paper Studio, yellow tropical floral patterned cardstock-Bo Bunny
embellishments: June Cocoa Daisy pocket scrapbook kit, Ali Edwards’ Pinterest Passport freebie png files, enamel dots-The Paper Studio, washi tapes (the Paper Studio, Bella Blvd, Recollections, Queen & Co.), stickers: Project Life and other
journaling pens: Project Life, Shimelle
date stamp: Project Life (original edition)
zipper folio: Webster’s Pages Craftmate Folio (grey)

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