14 July 2012

Travel journal for cousin


My cousin is taking her three girls to Prague & the Czech Republic for a month this summer.  Her husband is Czech, but he will not be there until the second half of the trip.  So my cousin will go over with her sister and her dad for a week, then they leave and she will go out to the countryside to stay with her in-laws for a week before her husband arrives.

This might be challenging for her since she speaks only English, her mother-in-law speaks some English, her father-in-law speaks Czech and German but no English.  I hope the week is not too long for her!

I offered to make a travel journal as a gift for her.  She is far too busy to deal with baby books and other stuff like that (she is pregnant with her fourth child, due in October), and I thought it might be nice for them to have this remembrance of this trip since it's such a long one.  I also thought it might be a nice way to keep the older two girls occupied sometimes when they can add their own drawings and writing to the book (ages 7 and 3-soon-to-be-4-next month).  For that reason as well as that my cousin likes strong, bright colors, I made the journal vibrant and fun.

The cover is made from grungepaper dyed with Fired Brick Distress Stain.  I used kraft cardstock for inner liner, although I didn't do it quite right as by the end I was in a hurry, so I sewed the third of the three signatures outside the liner.  Oops!  Ah well.


The signatures were made from the following card stock colors, obtained from Archiver's:  lemon bliss, scarlet, orange slice, berry, and neutral ivory.


I added a couple of envelopes in as a place to stuff those things that one just doesn't have time to deal with in the moment but doesn't want to throw away.




I also included decorative stubs between nearly every page in each signature to allow for the travel ephemera that is part of what makes books like these so special (receipts, tickets, drawings done by the kids, brochures, pictures, etc.).



In the end I was happy with the journal.  It should be sturdy enough for the job and fun for both my cousin & her daughters to write/draw in.  Now I just have to hope that they actually find time to use it!