by Tammy Dailor
One of the fun things about taking a trip is collecting maps, brochures, tickets, postcards, and other memorabilia.
Bring along a letter-sized envelope inside a 2-gallon sized plastic storage bag (to protect against water damage), and you can easily organize the bits and pieces as you gather them on the trip.
Once collected, the challenge is to actually use memorabilia in your projects. Memorabilia can be functional and decorative on your pages, but, what’s more, it will remind you of specific trip details that you might otherwise forget.
Here are five ideas for collecting and use memorabilia on your travel projects:
1. Organize your memorabilia soon after arriving home
Be sure to organize memorabilia into an envelope or page protector as soon as you get home. If you’ve been a scrapbooker for any length of time, you may already have a memorabilia box of some sort. Whatever you do, don’t put your travel memorabilia from a big trip with that other memorabilia. If it’s out of sight, it could be out of mind when you start creating. Instead, store it along with the photos and any other products you’ve gathered.
2. Use memorabilia directly on the scrapbook page
A great way to use memorabilia is directly on your page or mini album. “London” is a banded style 2-page layout. Journaling and five photos are on the left which gives lots of space for the memorabilia on the right side.
If you’re concerned about the acid and lignin content of your memorabilia, there are sprays that you can use to neutralize the acid. I tend to back my photos and anything that touches my photos with acid-free paper. Neither method will prevent deterioration, but both will slow down the process and help protect the photos.
3. Use pocket pages to scrapbook memorabilia
It may seem obvious, but a pocket page is one of the best ways to incorporate memorabilia on your pages. “Paris” is a 2-page layout with seven photos. The map and brochure were large, so the best way to include them in this layout was behind the photos in pockets.
4. Use post cards to hold your journaling
One of my favorite things to do with the postcards I collect is to use them for journaling. In this mini album about my recent trip to Europe, all of the journaling is contained on postcards.
While in Venice, I didn’t get a chance to take any birds-eye distance photos. The pictures on the postcard add some of the details my own photos were lacking. Note that I covered the back side of my postcards in Kraft paper to give more coverage area for my journaling.
5. Include coins in the memorabilia you collect and scrapbook
If you have to a place that uses a currency different from your own, remember to save a few bills or coins and add them to your pages. Divided page protectors are a great way to add in any bits or pieces that didn’t make it on your pages. You can incorporate coins in this way without adding any unnecessary bulk.
Are you taking a trip soon? Don’t forget to collect and then use the memorabilia that you discover along the way!
Tammy Dailor is a long time paper scrapbooker, currently residing in Nashville, Tennessee. She recently helped a few friends and neighbors organize and digitize their photo collections, which lead her to start a small custom digital imaging and organization business.
Tammy is the owner of YourMemoryConnection.com, a brand new scrapbooking site that shares ideas, solutions and strategies for making scrapbooking easier.
