paris travel books are ALWAYS a good idea!

unfortunately, i haven't been to paris yet, and thus have had no need to make one for myself. luckily, though, my friend amy got to go last autumn, which i decided was the perfect excuse to get my "ooh la la" on!

at 8 x 10" this book is quite a bit larger than the ones i make to take with me on a trip, and the ones i make for my etsy shop. but since i was constructing this after the fact, i wasn't that worried about size. and in fact, the bigger pages mean that amy can paste in more photos and souvenirs and things!

another consideration when i was determining what size book to make is that i had quite a few larger items i wanted to include. such as this page from an old history book that shows the construction of the eiffel tower, the pronunciation guide from a children's french lesson book i've trimmed and layered over it, and even the commercial patterned paper i used on the front cover.

when i thought about how much i'd need to trim off (and thus waste) it made me cringe a bit. so although it might sound silly, it truly is the #1 thing that made me decide bigger was better.

i think by know everyone know how much i like to mix old and new, elegant and funky. and the more you do that in a travel book, the more it allows for the inclusion of EVERYTHING we collect on trips; including those that we might not think "go with" a more homogeneous design. so yes, there is a map of the louvre my mom brought back a few years ago...

...next to a glittery eiffel tower from a calendar page, interspersed with a hambly transparency. 

another fun calendar find: hello kitty cycling past the arc de triomphe!!! meanwhile, you'll notice that instead of hand-binding the book, or even using a fun sprial binding, i went with two simple book rings. they aren't as fancy looking as the alternatives, but they allow amy to add, subtract and move around the pages, which seemed like a pretty important consideration.

more funkiness: a page from a 1960's french comic book, which i xyroned to some thin patterned cardstock to make it sturdy enough to be a stand-alone page.

a neat illustration from a fairly recent magazine, included just because it fit and i liked it. (most of my design decisions are made using those two very scientific considerations, lol!) 

a copy of, "alouette" from a book called, "world's greatest easy-to-play songs" which i found at a garage sale and absolutely fell in love with.

i put the title on the front cover using two different styles of vinyl thickers. they were not the first ones i tried, by any means, and when they turned out to be my favorites, i was frankly kind of shocked. but i do think they work. 

i wound up with a rather collage-style cover made of new products because i LOVED the eiffel tower paper, but that oddly shaped piece of  was all i had. and you can see right off: it's not big enough, lol! so i added a strip of vintage-inspired ledger paper and taped the whole thing together with a few strips of washi... which i repeated on the back cover to make it look more intentional!

et voila!

this concludes my paris travel book tour for today.

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here in new jersey it is *FIFTY* degrees, so i'm off outside to take a walk! i hope it is sunny where you are, or if not, that you have found something fun and creative to do indoors!

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