By the Time You Are Reading This

We will be well on our vacation journey.  Did you know that we have a scribe for our travels?  Her name is Sandra and it's her responsibility to record our activities and she does a lovely job of it too I might say.  So much so, that I decided to make a Memorabilia Travel Log for her this time. 

I began with an empty small binder that had it's own storage case.  It's been around my home for some twenty years waiting for the perfect craft re-purposing.  This was it! 

I've taken a few photos and hope to inspire you to make your own.  I've already got one customer who saw it inspired to perhaps make these as gifts next year.

It's a bit like the current "Smash Books" where you just put all and everything from your journey into the book.

I began by aging the edges of the binder with distress ink.  Not totally successful as the ink didn't dry on the material of the binder, so I had to wipe a lot of it back off.  However it does give the used/aged look I wanted. 

The next thing was to decorate the cover of a dollar store book for Sandra to write in.  That included attaching elastic to the back of the book to hold the glue runner at the top.  I didn't have any black elastic, so out came my Permapaque pen and white turned to black.  Using Scotch quick dry glue the book was attached inside the front cover of the binder and a small pen inserted into the coil for later use.

Now the fun of creating pages began.  The photos will show you the pages, but you will also see how some of the pages are actually yellow business envelopes decorated up and available for storage of leaflets or other memorabilia.  Each page also had it's own tab for turning from one page to the other.

These are just a sampling of the ten double pages that make up the Travel Log.

 The final "embellishment" was the vinyl CD storage case inside the back cover to hold a copy of all the vacation photos.

Here you see the embellished storage case for the binder.  You can just see the binder on the left hand side in the little cut out.

Guess what I'm hoping now!  I'm hoping it's too "fussy" for Sandra so that I can keep it myself....LOL.  No really, she could have an ongoing journal and complete scrapbook of our vacation by the time she gets home if she wants to.  I have plans to make another from a small ring bound photo album I have.

I hope I've inspired you to give this crafting idea a try.  Well worth the effort and now I've done one, I know the errors and pitfalls to avoid and a second one would take a lot less time.

Until next time, Happy Crafting.

Lilian

 

P.S.  She liked it!!!