This girl has been in desperate need of a vacation! Don’t get me wrong- I love my life- but everyone needs to get away now and again, right? It’s that light at the end of the tunnel that makes those rough days bearable. I love everything about vacation. The adventure, the food, the sleep, the photo opportunities. I even love coming home, because as much as I like vacation, I do miss my own bed. And one of my favorite things about getting home is printing out those photos and getting them scrapped while the memories are fresh.

But let’s be honest. It doesn’t always work that way. There’s laundry to do, groceries to shop for, and work to be done. Before you know it, weeks have passed and you haven’t had a chance to get those vacation layouts made. I learned a long time ago to take good notes while I’m on vacation. I hate the thought of making pages with vague journaling because I can’t remember the feel of a place or those little details that bring an experience to life. And there have been times when these layouts don’t get made at all. What if there was a way to solve both of those problems?

Enter the Vacation Scrapbook. Simply put, it’s a mini album you prep before you go, you take a few supplies to work on while you’re away, and it’s a snap to finish when you get back. I wish I could say I was the genius that came up with this brilliant idea, but I’m not. I’ve seen them making the rounds on the internet, Pinterest, and Lauren Hooper has an amazing class on the subject on Big Picture Classes.

The first step is deciding what type of album you’d like to use. I debated doing a 4×4, but in the end went with a traveler’s notebook. I love the size, and have a couple of inserts just begging to be used. Next up- supplies. I recently purchased October Afternoon’s Summertime Collection kit and thought the colors would be a great jumping off point. The idea wasn’t to use much of the collection- I wanted to save those for the 12×12 layouts I plan on making when I get home (hopefully), but I’m a fan of the combination of pink, yellow, and sage-blue.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when prepping your vacation scrapbook:

• The traveler’s notebook doesn’t allow for much bulk beyond the photos, so I wanted to keep my embellishments flat. Washi tape, stamps, paints, and stickers are great for this project.
• Once I’d decided on my colors and types of embellishments it was easy to collect the ones I wanted to use. We were driving to the beach so anything road trip, beach, or summer related went in the pile.
• Decide whether you want to structure your scrapbook by itinerary or category. For example, a few years ago my daughter and I went to Paris (you can see one of my layouts of that trip here) and the mini album I made for that was done in chronological order by each day. This vacation is going to be a lot of relaxing on the beach, so the pictures will probably be pretty similar. Instead, I’m going to group similar photos- road trip, beach, food, or anything else we might do.
• I bought an Instax Share printer for the trip and plan on using those exclusively in this vacation scrapbook. I cut a piece of scrap paper to the size of a printed Instax so I could use it when planning the backgrounds of my pages.
• Because I’m doing the prepping beforehand, I’m going to keep things pretty generic. I don’t know about you, but things rarely go as planned for me and I don’t want to make a scrapbook that doesn’t fit my photos when all is said and done.

With all that in mind, here is my prepped vacation scrapbook.

I used acrylic paint to make the swipes along the top and then stamped the adventure definition in Staz-On. The stamps at the bottom of the lefthand page are by Pink & Main and the stamps on the right are by Stamping’ Up.

I know at least two days will be spent on the road, since we’re driving, so I felt confident in making a place to put travel photos. I used stamps from a Close to My Heart set on the left. I wasn’t happy about the wave in the pink stripe along the bottom, but I didn’t take into account the paper I’d glued down on the other side. No big deal. I can cover it up when I add the photos if it’s still bothering me. The stamp on the right is from Stamping’ Up.

This is a stamp from one of the Close to My Heart sets. I created my own “background” paper on the left and added a corner embellishment for a photo using my scrap paper cut to the Instax size.

This is one of my favorite backgrounds. I just like the combination of colors and the simplicity. I used acrylic paint to make the dashes. The only downside is that paint takes time to dry and I hated having to stop when I felt like I was on a roll 🙂

I know what you’re thinking. Whoa, Adrienne! That page on the right is a masterpiece! It doesn’t look like much now, but I plan to put some photos down with washi tape and do some journaling. Hopefully, it’ll look much better once it’s filled in.

Another simple layout using a couple of stamps from a Close to My Heart set. Do you see those colors bleeding through down the center? Those are remnants from my page of acrylic paint dashes. That’s one thing about this project. You might make mistakes. Unlike a single page, you probably won’t want to start the whole book over again. It’s okay. You are an artist and it will be beautiful in the end. (At least that’s what I tell myself.)

I chose three washi tapes in the colors I was using and made a quick and easy frame. Remember, you are going to have a chance to embellish and add later, so every page doesn’t need to be busy or full. You want to leave room for photos and journaling because that’s the most important part.

This is the perfect time to break out those geometric and background stamps you’ve been hoarding and hardly ever use. Or is that just me?

This stamp set is a tiny one I got from Studio Calico. It wasn’t until I was done that I realized I should have used my photo scrap to check for the positioning because no matter where I put a photo, things are going to be covered up and there will be blank spaces. Still not worried since I know I’ll be able to add later, but would’ve liked to have planned better. I cut that scrap out for a reason!

For the end of my vacation scrapbook, I made a layout good for wrapping up the trip.

I’ve packed my washi tape, Instax printer, tape runner, date stamp, and felt-tip pens. The plan is to spend a little time while I’m away printing photos and journaling. It’ll be handy when it comes to journaling on those 12×12 layouts, but at the very least, I’ll have a little book of memories from my trip.

What do you do to capture your vacation memories? Do you find it difficult to scrapbook those travel photos or are you inspired when you get home to get some pages done?