How do you make a travel journal? What do you put in it? How do you decorate it? If you’re thinking of making a travel scrapbook or travel journal with pictures, we invite you to draw inspiration from the travel journal pages and travel scrapbook albums we’ve shared on our website: Enjoy the Journey: A Travel-Themed Travel Journal Page Documenting Summer Sailing Adventures
What Do You Put in a Travel Journal?
You can put whatever you want in your travel journal.
Some travel journals are just journals. They only contain handwritten journaling or typed journaling.
Some travel journals are art journals that contain some combination of drawings and journaling.
Some travel journals include some combination of photos, journaling and other mementos. These could be considered travel scrapbooks, or travel journals with pictures.
If you’re in need of ideas, I make the following suggestions for your consideration — but please do not feel obligated to use any of these ideas. If any of them appeal to you, use them; otherwise don’t.
When you travel, always grab your camera as you head out the door of your hotel, RV, boat or tent. Take bunches of pictures. Cull through them and include the best ones in your travel scrapbook.
Maps Maps: You Can Include Maps in Your Travel Journal. Photo Courtesy of Andrew Neel.
City Maps, Trail Maps, Destination Maps, ETC — Sometimes the visitor’s center at your travel destination will have maps available. Sometimes if you hike, bike or horseback ride on a particular trail, your guide will have trail maps available. When all else fails, you can print out a Google map of a destination you’ve visited.
Postcards
Postcards: Consider Adding Postcards to Your Travel Scrapbook. Photo courtesy of Becky Phan.
Not every travel destination has postcards available, but some do. I recommend getting postcards to include in your scrapbook in cases where you see a picture on a postcard that exactly captures your memory better than your own photographs of that destination do. For example, if you visit Paris at night, and you don’t have the capability to take spectacular nighttime photos, you might want to use a postcard as one of the images you’ll include in your travel journal.
Bring a sketch book with you when you travel, and make sketches, drawings or illustrations of all the interesting sights you see on your way.
Journaling
You might want to write journaling or short notes in your travel journal. Make sure to include dates, times, street names, and any other details you’ll want to look back on and remember later. Photo courtesy of Oxana V.
Write down your thoughts and observations about the places you visit, the people you encounter, the food you try and any other details you might want to remember about your trip.
Quotes
You Can Use Travel Quotes in Your Travel Journal. Photo courtesy of Priscilla Du Preez.
Perhaps a celebrity you admire or another interesting writer has already commented about a destination you’re visiting. If there are any inspiring quotes you’ve found about a particular destination, you might wish to include them in your travel journal or travel scrapbook.
Small Mementos
Concert Tickets: You can include these in your travel journal when it’s appropriate to do so. Photo courtesy of Bob Coyne.
If you have small, tangible, two-dimensional mementos from your trip, you might want to include those in your travel journal. Examples of this would be movie tickets, subway tickets, train tickets, concert tickets, brochures, etc. In cases where I was able to grab a brochure from a marina or historic site I have visited, I do like to include those in my own travel scrapbooks. Another example: If you attended a New Year’s Eve celebration in a different city, grab a few bits of confetti to include on your scrapbook page about the event.
You can decorate a travel scrapbook however you like. There aren’t any rules dictating what you put in it. If you’re in need of ideas, consider the following suggestions:
Travel-Themed Stickers
Stickers are popular embellishments for travel journals and travel scrapbooks because they are appealing to look at, broadly available, super easy to use and interesting to use. If you aren’t the most talented artist, stickers give you an easy way to add suitable artwork to your travel journal pages.
Bunches of scrapbooking supply companies make destination-specific sticker sheets available.
Stamp Imagery Using Travel-Themed Rubber Stamps or Clear Stamps
If there’s an image that you want to repeat on various pages of your travel scrapbook or journal, you might want to use rubber stamps or clear stamps to stamp that image in as many spots as you want it to appear. For example, you could use a compass rose stamp as an embellishment to fill any bare spots on your travel journal pages.
Travel Scrapbook Ideas and FREE Step-By-Step Tutorials
I’ve done a huge amount of traveling in my life. My husband and I used to live aboard a sailboat, and we cruised the California coast for a couple of years; then after that we crossed the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea in our sailboat. Before that, we traveled extensively throughout the United States, visiting Hawaii and lots of other appealing destinations. I’ve documented our adventures in bunches of different scrapbook albums and mini albums — and I’ve shared free step-by-step tutorials for some of the albums and scrapbook layouts I made. Here are links to some of the step-by-step travel journal tutorials I’ve shared:
Tiny Mini Scrapbook Album With Pictures From Santa Barbara, California: Here you can see that this little scrapbook mini album fits in the palm of your hand.
Here’s an idea for a tiny mini scrapbook album with a travel theme.
Seattle Cityscapes Scrapbook Mini Album Documenting a Trip to Seattle, Washington
Have you taken any trips to Seattle, Washington, or any sizable city? If you have travel pictures depicting skyscrapers, cityscapes, or waterfront infrastructure, perhaps you’ll find this travel album inspiring. It could give you ideas for how to present your own travel photos.
6×8 Scrapbooking Album Featuring Havivian Farmer’s Market in Ashkelon, Israel 6×8 Scrapbooking Layout Featuring Havivian Farmer’s Market in Ashkelon, Israel
6×8 Scrapbooking Album Featuring Havivian Farmer’s Market in Ashkelon, Israel
Scrapbooking Layout Featuring Photos of My Husband Mike Refueling Our Sailboat, Viva, Docked at the Marina in Santa Maria Island in the Azores, Portugal
This travel scrapbook basically just includes photos and a few embellishments presented in a small album; I didn’t do much of anything special to make this, so I didn’t see any point in making a step-by-step tutorial to document the process. However, I did take pictures of every page in the album so you can see how it turned out. If you aren’t into doing lots of embellishing and journaling on your travel journal pages, perhaps you might find this album inspiring:
