Nantucket Journal

I'm back from Nantucket and thought I would share a few pages of my travel journal with you. I always (well, almost always) do a journal for a "major" trip, and Nantucket surely falls into that category.

I collect all sort of ephemera and have a great time cutting and pasting my daily finds into my journal. I like to take a business card from favorite restaurants and shops. I often want to revisit them the next time I'm in the area and having the card in my journal is a great way to be able to refresh my memory before visitng the next time.

I love to use my Polaroid Pogo printer to print out copies of a few of my photos to add to my daily entry into the journal. I like the fact that the Pogo is small and easy to take along and I can add the photos I want as I go, not having to save space in the journal while I wait to get prints made. The 2 by 3 inch format is perfect for journaling, too, as most of my travel journals are 6 by 6 inches (small enough to fit into my pocket or handbag, large enough to allow me to add ephemera up to regular postcard size).
I take a few Copic markers with me on my travels, a glue stick, small pair of scissors, several pens, a travel watercolor box with brush and some sort of tape. I need a white out tape, too, as I am always making mistakes! I usually take along a small alphabet stamp set and one small ink pad. I like being able to stamp in place names or phrases to give some parts of the page special emphasis.
I don't worry about my journals gettng too "fat" as I just add a ribbon to tie the covers together.
I try to work on my journal every day, but if that proves to me impossible, I just make sure I've take some notes about what I did and collect the ephemera for that day so that when I do have more time for journaling, I have the material I need to catch up.
Often I find that I am too tired to work in the journal at the end of a long day, but since I am an early riser, I often get caught up in the early morning hours. It's a uiet activity that you can do even if your DH or travel companion is still asleep and it keeps me from going stir crazy waiting for my companion to wake up.
Often I will collect three or four postcards that I want to add to the journal, and using tape, attach them to each other and then add the accordian of cards to my journal at the spine with more tape. I have found that there is a Japanese masking tape product on the market now that comes in a rainbow of colors and patterns and I really enjoy using that tape to add some pizazz to my journal pages. I like having to unfold and flip over additions to the regular pages of my journals.
Using edge punches is fun, too. I loved how the "hydrangea border" turned out. I use rubber stamps occasionally, too. I bought a few different stamps while I was in Nantucket so I incorporated them into the journal.
The bathing beauty shown above is a Polly Minick design for a hooked rug. Polly taught at the 1800 House while I was in Nantucket and I was lucky enough to take her class in a hooked carpet bag (more about that in a later post). I took one of Polly's postcards advertising a show she had in Nantucket and cut it up and made the collage above with the bits and pieces. The postcard was too large to use in its entirety so I made it fit!
I collect feathers and bits of shells and rocks and often add them to my journal pages. They add a lot of texture even as they add a lot of bulk. I don't mind, though, as they are keepsakes.
ACK is the airport code for Nantucket.

I had a wonderful visit to Nantucket and will be posting more about the trip in a later blogpost.