Loose ends

I've bought a few of these Moleskine Messages notebooks recently, thinking that they'd make a great idea for a small gift, or replace the traditional postcard.  I'd taken one of them to Stockholm with me, thinking that it might be the ideal journal for this short jaunt.

I even scribbled in one over lunch in the middle of the cherry blossom last Tuesday.  But, time was short and I never got round to adding any colour, ephemera or anything else.

Shortly afterwards,  browsing the books in the NK store, I came across this one and my mind began to work.  I took more photographs than usual, thinking that I might have a go at a kind of collage, inspired by those in the book,

Well, of course, mine would be created digitally, rather than with scissors and glue.

Anyway, I've been tying up those loose ends, gathering the ephemera and sorting through the photographs.  I began by opening the individual photographs and editing a large collage in Photoshop but soon thought better of that and allowed Picasa to do it automatically for me!

My mind works slowly, so it wasn't until today that I hit upon the idea of creating my own "messages" style journal, drawing the design in my Silhouette software and cutting the shape with the machine.  In no time at all, it was done and I could enjoy the fun bit of filling it up with all the bits and pieces.

Rather than glue the photograph collages into the book, I printed them out as pages to include in the book.  I'd already sized them to Moleskine proportions.

I'm always aware of these events being recorded in so many different ways - I blog, there's the photographic record in Picasa, there's my Project Life pages, my scribblings in my notebook and now, there's a little journal as well!  So, I try to record different things in each, but it's inevitable that I end up repeating myself.  And in a short trip such as this, there are only a handful of themes: in this case, the journey and hotel, the food, the city, the ABBA museum and the Vasa.  Oh, and a bit of shopping ;-)

I didn't intend to post this one to anyone, but thought the flaps were a great way of keeping everything contained.  After all, when I cram lots of stuff into a few small pages, there's sometimes a danger of some of it coming adrift.

I used my sewing machine to stitch the pages together and then glued in the cuttings or used a bit of washi tape to create an extra page or two from them.

Yes, of course there's a map, showing off the fact that I can still do the Turkish Map Fold and there are a few strips of my favourite Moomin washi tape which I bought in Osaka, but hadn't found a place to use it until now.

I had a cherry blossom sticker which I thought I'd use (even though it doesn't really fit) and wrapped a yellow ribbon around to keep the whole thing closed.  I packs up quite neatly and is all comfortably enclosed.

I'm really pleased with the end result and will add it to my repertoire of journal designs for using in a variety of situation.

It's fun to sort through the bits and pieces from our little jaunt, but even better, to step outside into the garden here at home and discover that Stockholm doesn't have the monopoly on beautiful blossom.  The apple tree in the garden here is looking lovely this weekend, and if I can manage to step outside in the five minutes between the torrential rain and hail showers, I might even manage to capture the blue sky too!