the hybrid chick

Yes! This little notebook is traveling in Australia with me right now. Lucky little notebook hey? I love the idea of traveling light, though I am yet to totally achieve it.    A girl can dream can’t she?

Anyway – back to the notebook. In my effort to travel lighter I started making up travel notebooks or diary’s a few years ago. They needed to be specific for the time away. Wanting something compact that fit all my needs and still looked cute had been an impossible challenge to find ready made. Which ended up in me designing something that has become a yearly ritual to make.

I call this my “Brain in a Book”.

The little notebook I found at a local stationers. They are about A5 size and come with three plastic dividers and a plastic front and back cover. The best bit about them is they have an elastic piece attached at the back. This comes around the front and keeps it together – which is perfect for being dragged halfway around the world.

The dividers help me find things easy. One is for the things I have to purchase while home that are unavailable here. We start making a list about 3 months before we go and just add to it till we leave. It then gets transferred into the diary to have on hand when shopping. Often that means things like scrapping items, stamps and other craft stuff to go with my digi scrapping. Oh – and Vegemite!

The second section is for things we have to deal with while home, and contact details for people we have to see. The third section is to journal the trip and keep notes of memories and things I want to scrap when we return. Journaling prompts and places visited. Addresses of new friends etc.

Still this was not enough. It needed a diary section for keeping track of all the people and places we have to see. It sure helps when you arrive home to have it ready marked out for all those who leave it till the last minute to try and book in to see you.

So creating some date calendar pages and a layout for the front and back came next. I just make up weekly pages for the time we are away and an overall month page.

Pull the wire rings apart carefully so you can reuse them if you want. Measure your page size of the ones already in the notebook and make your layouts and calendar pages the same size in your editor. Choose a pretty kit and decorate these.

I have used two gorgeous kits from The Digi Chick on this one. Both Cool Cool Summer by MKC Designs and I Do Love You by Dani Alencar work perfectly together in my current favourite colour combo.

Then another page is made double the width of the pages and left joined down the middle. I cut off the top half of one, score it with the ScorPal, fold it over and use tape runner to secure it around the edge. Any collected receipts and business cards get put in here.

The first time I altered one of these I used the front paper cover as a template and traced the holes with a pencil.Then cut them out with a craft knife. This works quite well, just takes a bit of time.

By happy co-incidence I pulled out my Bind-It-All to check and it was exactly the same distance as the pre-purchased paper holes. Yippeee!! This cut down on my prep time a lot.

After putting all the pieces in the order I wanted, making sure my calendar pages were in the right order, I used the Zutter Bind-It-All to cut the holes again using the front paper as a template. This helped to make sure they all lined up nicely with the pre-cut paper that came in the notebook.

Then it was just a matter of assembling it all and adding the o’wires to join it back together. In this case I used the lovely Antique Silver O’wires from Zutter. This colour looked nicer with the kit colours I had chosen than the black. In the past I have just re-used the original wires that come on the notebook, carefully squeezing them back together.My daughter snaffled the black one and made a book for herself with it.

Of course I had to add a little ribbon.

This cute notebook now combines all my needs into one neat handy  little package saving me the necessity of carrying a journal, a notebook, a diary and an address book.

Guess I have achieved a little success on my way to traveling lighter.

Other Articles by Shabby Shaz:

• Wedding Gift Frame - March 5th, 2010
• Love Notes - February 14th, 2010
• Disc Album - January 6th, 2010
• Stitched Christmas Card - December 7th, 2009
• Romance Pack - November 25th, 2009