Preparations

It’s almost time for our annual Summer Road Trip.  With that in mind, when I was shopping recently and spotted a pack of Heidi Swapp’s No Limits paper in a discount store*, I picked it up immediately.  I’ve actually used this collection before, because it works well for a travel journal and the colours are to my liking too.

It’s a no frills journal this time.  Just a simple 6 x 8 landscape format which will eventually be spiral bound.  I cut plain and patterned pages and will use them in whatever order I come across them.

The first page is complete, though.  Isn’t it irritating when the place you are looking for is off the map, though?

*I bought the pack at Home Sense in Gloucester, the homeware offshoot of TK Maxx.  Though it wasn’t labelled as “seconds”, the quality of the print is not good and if I’d had more time/energy, I’d have taken it back.  As it is, I’ve cut most of it up and I guess it’s no big deal.

Finished.

Done.  Complete. 

After a great deal of effort this week, at last I can clear the decks of everything South America-related and move on to other things (I have quite a list).  I really ought to have resisted the temptation to do as I always do and taken my hero’s advice to forget about creating a journal this time round, for it ended up being a bit half-hearted and mainly a repository for one of two bits of ephemera which wouldn’t fit elsewhere.

I’d used the little grey Moleskine cahiers to scribble in as I went and as usual, the notes I jotted in there are a much more effective means of recording the story than anything.  This was the small drawing I did following our flight over the Nazca Lines in Peru.  Nothing more needed really, don’t you agree?

As usual, I feel I can be quite free to write down my thoughts in there!

It’s also a great way to spend five minutes here and there, practising my drawing.  I don’t feel constrained to create a pretty page or to get everything correct – I scribble and cross things out and don’t feel I’m making a respectable piece of work.  I’m just jotting stuff down.

Whereas in my journal, I feel I have to make something more attractive and “finished”. 

After a few days I had developed a common style for each page with the date, the weather and where we were.  I tried to draw and paint a couple of things in there but that paper just wouldn’t stand up to anything vaguely wet.  Even the rubber stamp ink soaked through if I wasn’t careful.

So occasionally, it was hard to fill the rest of the page and as a result, there’s quite a lot of blank space.

I filled a whole page with the cut out Andean cross pattern and went on to fill the opposite side with a few details about the day.

By the time I got to the last couple of days, I really struggled to finish it. 

I felt that on this occasion I’d told the same stories over and over again.  Why?  There really wasn’t any need to create that journal at all and I ought to have given it up before I went too far with it.  Never mind.  I’ll remember for next time!

Won’t I? 

Cross making

Remember this?

Or maybe not!  I didn’t use the picture in my blog post about the Fonck Museum in Vina del Mar, Chile, after all (for what I think are pretty obvious reasons) but it was one of the exhibits which caught my eye.  As I’m trying very hard indeed to put the finishing touches to my travel journal, I wanted to reproduce the Andean cross design from this weaving on a page and thought I’d simply draw it straight into the book.

Hah!

In my little pocket notebook, I’d drawn a simple version of it quickly during one of the on board lectures, noting the name “chakana” and referencing a photograph of inca fields in the Sacred Valley (which I can no longer find).  But the woven design was a little more developed and needed a little more thought.

A ruler, even?  I spent a while happily drawing with pencil and ruler before I reached the repeat pattern part and floundered a little.  Why had I not thought to use squared paper?

Rather than spend time finding a larger pad of squared paper, I grabbed the closest one to hand and soon found that it’s not as easy as it looks.  Getting the proportions correct meant starting with a four by four square in the centre and, if I was going to begin again, better get a larger sheet, eh?

I didn’t get very far here, either!  Somehow, in the second row, I was into half squares – huh? 

Oh, come ON!

Whose idea was this, anyway?

I then did what any sane person would have done to begin with.

I did a google image search for “Andean Cross”.

Following that link took me to this fascinating page which was far more interesting than trying to complete my journal.

Especially since, further down the page I spotted this design, which looked familiar.

That’s probably because I’d spent ages trying to draw that one in my sketchbook in a different museum a few days later, having already discovered that these “simple” designs are anything but.

Oh well, I’ll finish my journal another day…

Testing testing

I mentioned that I bought a couple of things in the art shop on Saturday.  With the travel journal in mind, I thought I’d look at a couple of notebook options.

I liked the look of these Midori spiral bound notebooks, especially the one with the brown paper pages.  It’s never simple, though, is it – they didn’t have my favourite small size in brown, just white…so I bought both the small white and the larger brown one, just to try.

I already had a new pack of small Moleskine Cahiers, tried and tested for handbag use.

I also bought a couple of the squared paper Oxford notebooks from a French supermarket when we were there last. 

I love that “papier satiné”  (sorry about the reflection – the covers are very shiny!)

I’d got a new set of tiny ink pads in my chosen palette for this trip too, so got out my trusty rubber stamp to do a bit of a test.

I used the first page as a test ground and stamped two colours to see which paper will be most likely to allow the ink to soak through.

Beginning top left and working clockwise, here’s what came through to the other side of the page in firstly, the small white Midori, then the brown paper Midori, the Moleskine and finally, the squared paper Oxford.

I wasn’t surprised by the Moleskine, because I’ve always regarded that as the main shortcoming of the brand (and one of the reasons I tend to scribble in pencil).  But the Oxford totally let me down too.  Maybe it’s going to be a brown paper journal this time?

Radical thoughts

We’re counting down the days to an adventure.  Those of you who’ve been reading a while will know that means I’m giving some consideration to the format of my journal.

I had it in mind to create something a little like this one which I bought in Japan and used to record the fun of a cruise in 2011. 

The pages have a folded pocket and not only did I find it fun to use, it was a good means of recording our travels without too much fuss.

I made myself a similar, if slightly larger journal for the following year’s cruise.

Once again, the pages have a folded pocket in which I could stuff all kinds of things. 

As I hummed and hawwed about what format/size to create, I really enjoyed looking through those journals and remembering the fun days we spent with our friend Sandie before boarding the ship in Sydney that year.

I was thinking, too, that every day whilst on board the ship, we receive a daily programme, “Passages”, which I usually stuff into my journal, cut out the relevant bits and then throw away the rest.  I was mulling over the idea of using those almost-A3 size papers to create the pages for my journal this time and putting them to good use.  Does it matter that I don’t know the exact size now?  Might I put together a kind of framework that I could then adapt once we are on board?

I was prevaricating.  Thinking out loud.  Muttering.

Then my Hero uttered a radical thought.

“Why do you need to do a journal at all this time?”

He had a point.  I’ll still put together some Project Life pages when I arrive back home, I’ll still write my blog and I can’t help but scribble in my notebook.  What if I used a slightly larger format notebook and made it into more of a journal?

Well, in the words of my m-i-l Bettine, “we’ll see, dear”.

I do know that contrary to expectations, cruises offer less time than a road trip to sit and create pages in a journal.  They’re low on ephemera too, because travelling in a group means no entry tickets and suchlike.  So, yes, maybe I could simply extend my notebook.  I wouldn’t need to take all that art kit with me and instead, could simply take the minimum bits and pieces.  A glue stick maybe, to fix things in….or maybe a small stapler…and a few crayons…pair of scissors…one of those waterbrushes…oh, and perhaps a small sheet of rubber stamps?

In less than two weeks time we will have boarded the ship here*.  (Can you guess where it is?)  We’ll already have set sail to retrace a route we last sailed in 2004, hopefully exploring a few different ports of call this time and adding two new countries to our list, weather permitting.

And every evening when we return from dinner, there will be a copy of Passages on our bed.  Will I be able to resist making it into a journal, now I’ve had the thought?  What do you think?

* We board the ship in Callao, which is the port of Lima, Peru, where we left it two years ago to go to Machu Picchu.  The photo is of the beach in the Miraflores district where we’ll stay overnight before boarding.  Did you ever imagine Lima to be a beachy place?