Happy 4^th of July

I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend!

This weekend brings fond memories of family trips to visit relatives. While I am not traveling this weekend I often think of travel journaling since many of my customers are traveling when they come in to the store.

We all seem to have a common thread: we to make a travel journal. However, frustration frequently set in when feelings of ineptness set in because our journal do not look like the ones in the many books that are out on the market. I encourage you to over come these feels and to not compare yourself to others. It’s your journal, your art work and most of all: your creation. Be happy about being able to create.

Here are my suggestions for creating a travel journal:

Have your book before you leave home.

Paint a few pages, put a border on them or some color. The goal is to have some color on the page so it is not a naked page staring you in the face when you open the book.

Keep your travel journal kit simple. I carry my on the airplane and frequently use that time to write, paint and draw. Plus, if I have a delay, I have something to do! I carry a small watercolor set, a set of waterproof pens and a water brush that is easy to fill anywhere and fits in the liquids bag at security.

If drawing seems out of reach, try switching hands. I am right handed most of the time, yet I learned in a drawing class that my left hand has a whole lot more fun than the right. Yes, the images look cartoonish, but I don’t practice all the time at it and am happy to put something to the page. Plus it is good for the brain to exercise it by doing something differently.

Try to make time when you are on vacation to record your thoughts and add to your journal. This I find is the hardest part of traveling. I try to do some in the morning over coffee and the newspaper.

Traveling to National Parks? Each park has a unique stamp at a station inside the visitor’s center that you can use to record your visit to the park. They have a passport book that you can buy and then stamp each park in the book. I have never wanted what was in the book the park system produces but wanted to record my visit. I now carry blank ATC sized cards, stamp the park stamp on one then add a small sketch, ticket, or what ever suits the moment. The card then goes in my travel journal. A quick, versatile way to keep track of the National Park visits.

Have fun with your travel journal.