CREATING A TRAVEL JOURNAL

Do you love travelling and have a creative side? During your next vacation, why not try creating a travel diary or journal? More than just a photo album that recaps the main parts of your trip, a travel journal allows you to preserve precious memories at the same time as you customize the journal to make it as unique as your experience. Would you like to set your creativity free? Follow Caran d’Ache on a creative journey where you can follow our step-by-step guide to creating your own travel journal.

Whether you're a budding artist or a fearless traveler, this journal will become your travelling companion, keeping within its pages all your most exciting holiday memories. Get out your pencils and your most beautiful notebooks and take inspiration from Caran d’Ache to organize your memories and breathe life into your best travel stories.

Like a personal journal or a blog, keeping a travel journal is a way to preserve holiday memories and tell your stories in an innovative way. Starting a travel journal is also a way of expressing your creativity through writing, sketching or photography.

There is no such thing as the perfect travel journal. The most important thing is that it reflects the experiences and emotions you felt during your trip. So make the most of your next break to set your creativity free!

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First things first: choose a notebook for a travel journal that reflects your personality and will provide different customization options.

You should consider:

● The size of the notebook: choose a journal that will fit your needs. A larger notebook will give you more space to draw and make collages, while a smaller one is ideal if you travel lightly. For example, the COLORMAT-X A5 notebook by Caran d’Ache is available in nine colors and its A5 format and 120 pages make it ideal for journaling.

● The binding: choose between a spiral binding that makes it easy to open and close the notebook, or a more traditional one with a stitched spine for an elegant look.

● The quality of the paper: if you enjoy drawing, choose a notebook with pages of thick paper and good quality drawing instruments. If you're more of a writer, choose a notebook with smooth paper adapted to writing and a comfortable pen.

● The notebook’s cover: would you like to customize your notebooks’ covers with drawings and photographs? Or would you prefer a notebook with a leather cover and thick paper? While the pages within will affect what you do in your travel journal, so will the notebook’s cover.

Choose your supplies according to your tastes, your needs, and the creative ways you would like to use your travel journal to tell the stories of your trips (writing, drawing, photos, watercolor, paint...). Here is a list of supplies you can draw from to start your travel journal:

● Graphite pencils for drawing and sketching,

● a ballpoint pen or a fountain pen to drop down your thoughts and tell your travel stories,

● a set of SWISSCOLOR water soluble color pencils for drawing and watercolor, compact and ideal to take on the go,

● a water brush, a brush with a water reservoir that allows you to use watercolor on your travels,

● Caran d’Ache Pablo™ color pencils for colorful drawings,

● felt-tip pens,

● kneaded art eraser or putty rubber,

● a pencil sharpener,

● glue to stick memorabilia such as train tickets, photos, maps of memorable places etc,

● sticky tape, Washi tape, glitter, stickers…. To organize and decorate your journal and entries,

● a protective cover for your notebook

● envelopes or folders in which to keep your souvenirs and memorabilia, and that will fit in the notebook.

When choosing the perfect notebook and the supplies you will need to keep a travel journal, don't lose sight of how you're going to use it. There are many ways to make your travel diary your own, whether collage, sketching, watercolor, writing and storytelling are just some of the ways you can customize your travel diary. The key is to strike a balance between practicality and creative pleasure.

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● Think about how you'd like to organize your notebook: in chronological order? by place? around specific themes?

● Take inspiration from sites dedicated to creative DIY and arts and crafts (blogs, Instagram accounts of avid travelers, specialized travel sites, Pinterest, etc…) and fill up on creative ideas.

● Keep everything you have collected during your trip, such as plane tickets, bus tickets, brochures, postcards, maps etc., and print your photos. You can then stick all these precious souvenirs in your travel journal.

● Write down every anecdote and experience as you go along, so you remember everything. Your travel journal should tell the story of your trip.

● Write down important details, dates, place names, the people you met and even restaurant menus. All of these can be precious details that will bring back memories later.

● Integrate maps of the places you've visited to give some context to your trip and show the itineraries you used, especially if you were on a road trip.

● Try and maintain a level of coherence in the way you fill in the pages to give a good overall aesthetic to your journal, but also try and remain flexible to adapt to the different experiences.

And most importantly, let your creativity free. The most important thing is that your travel journal reflects your personality.

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