Tuesday Tutorials : Shimelle Laine : A Journal For Travels Ahead

This week Tuesday Tutorials welcomes Shimelle Laine.

I think I first encountered Shimelle back in 2005 when I signed up for her online Art Journal Challenge workshop. That was my first experience playing with an art journal and I came away really, reallyinspired (need to pull those out again one of these days). Since that time her workshop offerings have grown and expanded to include many more scrapbook-focused classes, including one of my personal favorites: Journal Your Christmas.

Today Shimelle is going to talk you through her process for creating a travel journal before the travel (what I like to call a "scrapbook on the road"). Read on for a bunch of great ideas & tips:

You
know those stories of what you did on summer vacation?  This summer, I
traveled exactly halfway around the world to see a friend I hadn't seen
in ten years.  We were best friends at our tiny little university in a
tiny little town in the middle of a big empty field of farmland.  In
those days, 'travel' was driving the two hours in either direction to
get to an actual metropolis.  That was in Kansas.  Now I live in
England and my friend lives in Hawaii.  Inevitably, near the end of the
trip we had a discussion of what had and had not changed in those ten
years, and top of the list of what was different about me?  "You
travel.  Like so much."

I'm not sure what started the travel bug
for me, but I will admit my friend did hit upon the biggest change to
my life over the last decade.  If you flip through my scrapbooks, more
than half of my pages are about going places, near and far.  We have a
slightly embarrassing habit actually: on the journey home from one
trip, we decide where we go next.  By the time we hit the front door,
we know where that will be, and we can start researching and bargain
hunting right away, which is at least half of what makes it all
possible.  And a big part of that process for me is creating something
that will help me commit to the next adventure -- something that
combines a need for organisation, the energy of creativity and the
documentary value of a scrapbook.  So basically what I'm saying is that
I scrapbook the trip before we go anywhere.

Okay, I'm not saying
that at all.  I create a travel journal in advance.  For me, there is a
difference between a scrapbook and a journal, although it can be a very
small difference sometimes.  A scrapbook is made after the fact,
written in reflection (even if it is reflecting on just a day or so
ago), and it's something I would love anyone to come in and look
through if they so wished.  Journals are a bit different: they are of
the moment and they are more personal: I reserve the right to choose
whether my journals would be open for sharing or hidden away.  Travel
journals tend to fall somewhere in the middle, as they are most
definitely written as the trip unfolds, but I add photos and extra
content after the trip - in reflection.  And I can't think of a travel
journal I wouldn't be happy to share with anyone who would sit still
long enough to take a look.

Originally, I just kept my travel
journal in plain notebook form and jotted down notes along the trip.  I
had every intention of coming straight home, ordering prints of my
photos and making the entire scrapbook almost instantly. After all, I
had all those notes! And all those pictures! What could be easier? 
Well.  Um.  If you look through my albums you will find several that
are started in that great intention yet remain...unfinished.  So I had
to change plans.  I needed to take the energy that I had when I was
planning a trip and looking forward to it and use that creatively so I
would have something that was practically finished by the time I got
home...and my mind was already drifting to a new destination.  Our next
holiday is a hiking trip in the West Fjords of Iceland, in just a few
weeks, and my journal is ready to go.  That's the project I want to
share with you.

I love starting with some sort of existing book
structure that I can adapt as I go, and for this project I started with
the Making Memories Great Escape Portfolio album, which comes with a
mix of pages including page protectors, tabbed dividers, envelopes,
pockets and transparencies. The pages are 8x8 in size, which is a size
that fits well in the bag I carry everywhere on our travels, so that
works for me! With the album chosen, I work out a general outline of
what I will include so I can create it in an efficient
process...otherwise I will never finish the project on time! This is a
seven day trip, so I knew I wanted to have seven pages of travel log. I wanted most - possibly all - days to have something decorative. I
wanted lots of open places to easily add photos when I came home and
lots of pockets to hold bits and pieces from the trip as it
progressed.  And I wanted one last practical page that would make it
all work for me (more about that in a bit).


The
travel log pages are the easiest, so that's where I start.  I chose
seven patterned papers that would work together - with no second
guessing allowed - and printed the travel journal worksheet on each
sheet.  Three of these were glued straight to the 8x8 cardstock that
came with the album.  I prefer scissors to my trimmer, so I just glued
the paper down so it covers the cardstock, turned the cardstock over
and cut off the excess.  I inked the edges and added a bit of paper
trim here and there, just punched from scraps.  The remaining four were
trimmed to just the box around the travel log, with the edges inked and
just sat to one side for now.


The
four tabbed sheets came next.  These were always going to be the
creative fun part!  I tend to do a lot of collage-style work in my
journals, but with an obvious influence from the scrapbooking world. 
Clustering items in a collage is just like clustering them on a
layout.  I started each of these with an old book page.  I like to
brighten the middle of the page with white paint, so I keep a small
bottle of Neopaque white acrylic in my tool kit.  Just scribble it
along the page then use a brush to fan it out or just finger paint with
it -- it comes off your hands far more easily than most acrylic paints.


She is the commissioning editor of Scrapbook Inspirations, the UK's top selling scrapbooking magazine and a Garden Girl at Two Peas in a Bucket.  She designs stamps for Banana Frog and today marks the launch of her own line of digital products.

She
and her husband now call London home and also find it a rather
convenient hub for travel.  They both suggest you go somewhere soon.
And take lots of pictures.