here be braggin'

for which i apologize, but i love making travel books generally, i enjoyed making the one from our recent new york trip especially, and now that it's finished i am both inordinately fond, and inordinately proud of it! the best part is, 90% of the materials which went into it were free things we picked up on the trip: brochures, menus, business cards, tourist maps, and the like...all the things a packrat like myself tends to want to amass whilst travelling were given a perfect home!

first here's the book as it looked when i left home: it's basically just 4.5 x 9" homemade chipboard covers (sized to accomodate the average tourist brochure!), and some pre-formatted pages for writing what we did each day. everything is punched and hung from a metal bookring:

i took my travel scrapping kit with me, (basic supplies packed in a plastic school box: adhesive runner, hole punch, a few pens, mini stapler, gluestick, etc) and each night i wrote down the basics of what we did on that day's page, and punched & added whatever fun things we collected. at the end of the trip it looked like this:

when i got home, i finished the writing and added a bit more "caption style" journaling with my dymo labeller. it really only took a few hours, but the few hours were spread over a week or so.

then all that remained to do was print some photos and decorate the book's cover, but that's where the project got a bit stalled, due to dithering: should i make photo collages, or single prints? should i use a panoramic format or regular 4x6's? or maybe i should i make a whole bunch of mini prints and attach them to the pages they illustrate? yeah, i got a little bogged down. then last night i suddenly got excited again and all in a rush i made my decisions and finished the book! yippee!!! :)

first, here's the cover:

i went with a subway map background. i love maps on the cover of travel books...they kind of put you RIGHT THERE again, dontcha think? a few rub-ons & dymo labels, and of course you need a centerpiece:

i got the cool diecut skyline card at the museum of modern art. i didn't want to do much to it, so i just matted it and added an equally iconic title: i love new york. ('cause i do!) but wait--you haven't seen the BEST PART yet:

yep, it UNFOLDS!!!!!!!!!! how cool is that??!?! ok, confession time: this one element cost more than everything else in the entire book--i think it was $10! i kind of had a qualm when i saw the price, but i couldn't resist; of course now that it's ON the book looking awesome, i feel like it was totally worth it!!! (on the right you can see one of several basic grey magnetic snaps which i used to keep it from unfolding constantly!)

to me a plain metal bookring just SCREAMS for ribbons...and...for something dangly! :) stef got me this awesome "NYC" compass and i knew right away it was going on my book!!! i found the mini-license plate in a souvenir shop, and the little apple is from a pack of charms i got at the ink pad.

here are a few highlights from inside the book:

at "top of the rock" they gave us these really cool booklets to identify all of the nyc landmarks. i wanted to included mine in the book, but i didn't want to punch holes in it, so i made a sleeve from the flattened out pillow box one of our desserts came in (don't worry, it's clean!) the brochure is snug enough not to move around much, but can be taken out easily.

i mentioned that the question of photos was one of my biggest debating points. finally i settled on something completely different:

i printed them on inkjet transparencies, at the same size as my hand-written journaling pages (4 x 8.5") so they would overlap...but not totally obscure...the text. as i was placing them, i discovered an added bonus: when you flip 'em over, they let the *PRECEDING* page of the book show through, too!

here's a closer look at what i collect when travelling. this stuff is from the metropolitan museum of art:

you can see my pre-made journaling page, on which i've written a bit about our visit, it has a tag from the shop and the little museum badge attached to it; there's the official brochure, plus a few poscards from the shop...to the one from the temple of dendur i've clipped a photo of stef & i which a fellow visitor was kind enough to snap for us. there's a photo of the met's mascot, william the hippo (taken by stef) printed on transparency, and the little handout from my favorite exhibit of victorian photo-collages.

finally, here's the whole sprawly thing:

i love that everything inside is a slightly different shape and size. i think it adds so much interest when you turn each page and get glimpses of what comes before and after!

thus i conclude the longest blogpost ever...only slightly shorter than the trip itself! :) thank you very much for coming along with me!!!

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(materials: two layers of thin recycled chipboard xyroned together & trimmed to size to make book covers; white cardstock pages formatted in broderbund printshop; 4990810font downloaded free from dafont.com; accordian-folded skyline of new york city greeting card purchased at the MoMA design store; heidi swapp chipboard letters; creative imaginations rub-ons; dymo labels; stewart superior india ink pad; basic grey, american crafts & current patterned papers; staples bookring; ribbon, rhinestone heart sticker & epoxy sticker from michaels; basic grey magnetic snaps; photos printed on 3m inkjet transparencies & kodak premium photo paper; making memories brads & paper clips; all other materials acquired on our trip...MTA subway map, postcards, business cards, menus, brochures, bits of packaging, floor plans, etc...most of these were free!!!)