Hasta Luego!

My dear friend JY is a high school Spanish teacher.  She loves Spanish culture and any Spanish speaking countries and she travels a lot.  Her next big trips will take her to Mexico and then Spain.  For her birthday, I decided to switch gears a bit (since last year I gave her a crochet scarf and the year before a handmade handbag) and put my scrapbooking tools to work.  She's recently expressed an interested in writing while travelling so I made her a Mexico & Spain inspired travel journal.

Perhaps this post will inspire you to make your own journal to accompany you on your next trip or create one to give as special handmade gift.

Here's some of the inspiring vintage (& non-vintage) ephemera I used: old Nat Geo's, maps, postage stamps (of course) and plenty of colorful scrapbooking paper.

Being a record collector, I used old record covers for everything.  In this case I used the covers to make my journal cover and also a few book marks.

I used vintage accounting ledger for the journal pages.  

I stitched the binding of my book with my sewing machine and then reinforced the binding with vintage textured framing tape.  I covered the journal cover in a map of Spain, lined it with old stamp album pages and reinforced the pockets and edges with colorful washi tape.

Since I used gatefold LP covers to create the journal, they made natural pockets.  This is where JY can keep her receipts, passport, postcards or any other bits of ephemera she picks up along her journey.

Then I really went to town and decorated every single page of the book with images and ephemera from Spain or Mexico.

And now it's back to the grind for me.  I have a couple crochet projects that I really wanna finish before I turn into a pumpkin!