Travel Journal Cover Story

Sure, you want to travel some day. When you have vacation time, or when you’re older. Well, what are you waiting for? Find a way to take a trip, if not this month, then sometime soon. You may need to sell your car or stop your cable bill and stop eating out to do it, but make it happen. You are too young to not see the world.
/Leo Babauta

Today it is so hot outside that I’ve stayed in and edited my first journal video! It’s coming soon, I’m doing the last bits now.

I’m still happy that I took that trip to Egypt one week in December last year. I’m not going abroad this summer but I feel very content to stay at home in July, flipping through my first Travel Journal and enjoying the super hot weather Sweden has got this month. When we left the Travel Journal Series the pages I’d journaled on did not have a cover yet, so I thought I’d show you what I did with them. I think it turned into a really pretty book project! Just looking at the finished book has inspired me to plan many upcoming projects. I have already started new book projects that are scattered around my workspace right now. Fun fun fun!

This is not a cover story, it’s the story of the cover (though there will be an article about this book in the Australian zine mix tape zine coming out soon!). As you might recall I have written about this book before, if you’re planning to travel and journal this summer you might want to check out the previous posts;
Travel Journal inspiration – part 1
Planning a travel journal – part 2
Keeping a travel journal – part 3

Now, let’s look at the cover of my Egypt travel journal!

The cover paper is spray painted (through a dotted stencil) in “Egypt warm colours”; orange, yellow and red.

The pages are sewn in two huge signatures into the fabric spine, just like I’ve done before when binding at home, making previous Handbound Art Journals with watercolour pages inside. It is an easy way to bind a book, but I think I’m going to try something else next time. I’m not really fond of the unsteady fabric spine. It is easy to use too much fabric that will look pleated on the shelf (I have done this several times now!).

Maybe the fabric spine works best with thinner books. I like lots of pages because I like to use my journals for a while. I want to glue lots of travel ephemera inside, and I also tend to write a lot in my diary.

The end threads of the book binding are just perfect for bead decoration. Dangling sparkly stuff are fun on the finished book, but if you will write on a flat surface don’t add them until the book is full or it will not lay flat. I have several little metalic embelishments that I never use, but now I found one that looks like a travel bag, perfect for this booK!

There are so many fun details in this book that I will do another post with some “detail photos” too, after I finish that journal flip video!

I hope you are keeping a journal this summer, to preserve those fun memories while traveling or having a staycation at home… Snap photos, save tickets, write down your thoughts and then sew (or glue) it all together into a yummy mix of memories. That is what journaling is all about anyway. You and your day today.