Road Trip Mini Album

Last month, my family and I packed up our camper trailer and pointed ourselves north, in search of adventure and warmer days (not listed in order of importance!!). One thing I love to do for longer trips is document them separately from our main family Project Life album, and my go-to is a mini-album based around index cards. I LOVE index cards, because it makes it so easy to journal on them as we go along, and then punch holes in them and add to the book rings to bind them all together.

For this trip, I decided to do my mini-album slightly differently. I took my Instax along with me, and at each stop, the children and I would take turns to take a single photo of where we were. These photos were then what I scrapped as we went along. I did originally have intentions of printing my photos from my D700 & GoPro and adding to the album, but it is thick enough as it is, so I will be creating a separate photo book of those photos.

It was a really fun little project, and the children loved being able to take their photo, and watch as I pulled it together into an album page. Even half -finished, they would sit beside me and flick through the album, pointing out their photos and talking about the places we had seen and stopped.

Being in a camper trailer for a month, with four children, space was somewhat limited, and apparently my stash of craft supplies was considered “non-essential” when it came to space allocation. To keep it simple and easy, I used a 6×6″ paper pad as the base of the pages of my album (the outer is a letterpress chipboard cover of my own making - I’ll be popping a couple in the ASWC shop later this afternoon). The album itself is A6 size (5.5″ x 4.25″), so the 6″ pad worked well, giving me space to cut down the page to size, with some scraps left over I could use on other pages.

I cut the paper with a small pair of craft scissors and used just a regular old glue-stick to stick everything down. The hols I punched with my cropadile, though a regular hole punch would work just as well. Again, due to space restrictions, I wasn’t able to take much in the way of embellishments, so kept it simple with a couple of stamp sets and a black Staz-on inkpad, and rounded out the supplies with a sharpie and felt-tip pen, and a couple of small rolls of washi.

I still have a couple of pages to finish up, but I am loving this little album so far. It was only about 15 minutes a day that I spent on it, which has paid off in being able to come home with almost a complete album already, because I am a shocker for dumping photos on a hard drive and then not doing anything with them (looking at you, Europe 2010 photos). I find we often end up looking at our mini-albums more often than our large Project Life album.

We are already planning our next big trip, which means I am already thinking of how to streamline my kit and what I should and shouldn’t have in it. What are your favourite things for taking on the road with you? And where’s your favourite place to find awesome paper pads?

Rachel @ The Barefoot Crafter (42 Posts)

I'm a wife and mama who loves to craft. I love creating, and have never met a hobby I didn't like, though my main vices of choice are quilting and sewing, photography & memory keeping, knitting and crochet, art, and creative writing. I blog my eclectic crafting journey at http://thebarefootcrafter.com, and you can find me on most social media at @barefootcrafter