Scrapbooking travel and vacation

Chronicling your travels on scrapbook pages allows you to relive the trip even when you’re back home.

Photos, memorabilia, facts and journaling impressions are all part of making scrapbook pages that capture the trip.

While some travels are best looked at chronologically when you are making scrapbook pages, others benefit from a “subject” approach. Consider the following types of travels:

1. Scrapbooking the “weekend getaway”

A weekend getaway can be as much about the company as the destination. It might be a short trip to hang out with friends, find some romance, see an exhibit, or just take a break from your typical weekend routines. With fewer photos from fewer activities (than you’d have with bigger trips), the scrapbooking of weekend getaways can focus on impressions, stories, companions, and moments.

Try this: find a strong opening photo and a strong closing photo. Put each of them on their own scrapbook pages and then make several pages for the middle that show the key stories/moments on this short getaway. Get the stories written down as soon as you can, in a diary or on a blog, if you’re not scrapbooking the pages immediately.

2. Scrapbooking the “road trip”

More about scrapbooking road trips.

A “road-trip” type vacation is not necessarily a literal trip in a car on a road or highway. The “road-trip” vacation is one that takes you to a series of what may be quite different locales over the course of one trip. The road-trip is a story that’s well-suited to being told in chronological order (more or less).

Try this: Use the Travel Page Planner to start detailing the different stops on the trip. After you’ve listed them all, go back through and think about whether they all really need to be included. Think, also, about whether there are some stories that merit their own pages and how best to get the pages and stories in order.

3. Scrapbooking a trip that’s about “being there”

More about scrapbooking “being-there” vacations.

Some trips take you to one locale. There’s limited sightseeing on this type of vacation, and it’s more about enjoying place, people, and activities. Examples of this kind of vacation include:

• visiting family
• staying at a lakehouse/beachhouse
• going camping
• the ski slopes

Try this: It’s often more efficient and makes a better presentation when “Being There” trips are by categories or logical groupings. These groupings (which translate into pages) might be:

• the people
• the place
• the spots at the place
• the constants
• the hightlights
• the activities

4. Scrapbooking a vacation when you go “on tour”

More about scrapbooking the “on-tour” vacation.

The “On Tour” travel experience is one in which many of the details are decided ahead of time–and, in fact, taken care of for you–so that you can relax as well as experience new sights and experiences. There are many ways to go “on tour” from taking a cruise to going on guided hike and camping adventure. You might take a bus tour through Europe or go on safari in Africa.

The photos you take while on tour will include those of the sights you visit as well of those of the aspects of the tour experience (i.e., lodging, people, routines). A combination approach that mixes chronological telling of the trip with select subject pages would work well for this kind of travel scrapbooking.

Try this: Make two lists: one of the trip chronology and one of the aspects/subjects you want to feature. Use a chronological flow with the featured aspects inserted where they flow best.

5. Scrapbooking the Themed Vacation

More about scrapbooking trips to “themed” destinations.

The “themed” vacation is one that takes you into a created world where you are doing more than viewing, where you’re entering into and experiencing a manufactured reality. You may have gone on a Disney vacation, visited a historic settlement where you’re re-enacting the way things were done in the past, travelled to Santa’s Village, or many other variations on the themed destination. The photos from a themed vacation can cover a lot of territory, and they don’t usually require a chronological telling. Aspects of a large theme/amusement park may include: characters, rides, performances, events, posed portraits, sights and more.

Try this: Begin with your “stack” of photos (prints or digitals). Select the keepers AND select the photos that are spectacular and that should be featured. Use the page planner to start defining the pages your photos demand of you. Once you’ve made a first pass at this, you might need to cut the planner up and play with order and arrangement of pages.

“Scrapbooking Travel & Vacation” is a self-paced class presenting five strategies for choosing colors, developing color schemes, including memorabilia, and writing journaling based upon the kind of travel you’re scrapbooking:

• Weekend Getaway
• On Tour
• Being There
• Road Trip
• Themed Destinations

31 page sketches with layered templates for Photoshop are included with this class – ready for immediate download. You also get the printable Scrapbook Your Travel Page Planner.