How to Make a Travel Journal That Always Inspires You

By Gina | August 18, 2015

Let’s empty our backpacks after a week of traveling to new places. If you’re like me, you would find lots of receipts, informational brochures, business cards from coffee shops I loved, my crumbled boarding passes and lots of ticket stubs. If you look at my camera, you’ll find thousands of photos capturing the ins and outs of different cities. All these things need a home. Would you like to know how to make a travel journal with all these items and more? I lay out my entire process so that you can always look back on travel memories to inspire you to explore the world. Also, for more ideas for your travel journal, make sure to check out my ultimate guide to your best travel journal!

For me, I love to include all types of travel inspiration photos in my journal, so that it is not just place to document my travels but a book that inspires me throughout the years.

How to Make a Travel Journal – Collect Memories & Share Inspiration

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If you are ready to create your own inspiring travel journal, here is my complete guide on how to make a travel diary that inspires you!

Travel Journal Supplies:

A spiral sketchbook — I recommend a hardcover spiral journal with blank pages. Make sure the pages are not perforated to ensure that they don’t rip out easily. Also if you want to find a good notebook, check out these tips for finding the perfect notebook for creatives!
Glue sticks or mod podge
Photos, Journal entries, travel magazines and more! — Everything you need to place in your notebook! For ideas, check out 11 things to put in your travel journal.
Washi Tape — For decoration and to easily attach photos and paper to your notebook.
Stickers – These are cute passport stickers to include.
Scrapbook paper— To make interesting designs on your journal pages.
Scissors
Pens

After gathering your supplies, you are ready to start making your travel journal. Think of a travel journal like a scrapbook. What makes a travel journal unique is that you can place journal entries on the pages and incorporate your favorite images along with it. Here are the steps I take to make an inspiring travel diary!

1. Gather your photos, maps, travel magazines, scrapbook paper, tickets, business cards, etc.

This first step is the the fun part! Gather all your items and organize them in front of you either by city or country, by colors or by size. I liked to organize my images by size in order to balance out background images with other smaller images to complement the large images.

Quick Tip for Printing Photos Easily & Quickly! I use Free Prints, an app that lets you order 4×6 prints from your phone in minutes! The only thing you pay for is shipping! What you do is select images from your camera roll or your Facebook, Instagram or other social media sites and select how many prints you’d like. Then, they arrive at your door! You can use this app while you travel and then once you get home, you can have your prints ready waiting for you to use for your travel journal!

2. Choose your background.

After collecting your images and items to include in your journal, take the largest photos or pieces of scrapbook paper and choose the background image. You can choose to leave the background plain, too. I think it looks cool to have a map in the background or a large photo from your travels. Cut and paste your background on the white paper, trimming the edges if necessary.

3. Design the rest of your pages.

Choose a theme for each page in your journal. Themes can revolve around a city, country, food, form of transportation, type of architecture, and more. You can even make these collages according to color or vibe. Give your journal its own personality by adding extras like washi tape details, notes from your friends or family, postcards, scrapbook paper, stickers or magazine cutouts. You may choose to have it go in a timeline fashion, or place things geographically on a map.

4. Paste your items in place.

Using glue or mod podge (or another adhesive), paste your design in place. Wait for it to dry for a couple minutes, and then go back over it to see if any other parts need to be glued down more.

[bctt tweet=”Need some #travel inspiration? Make your own travel journal today! “]

5. Continue to add to your journal.

The best part about travel journals is that you can continue to add things to the pages and continue adding pages as you visit new places. I’ve found that I have been more inspired by my travel journal the more I add to it. Have a goal to add a new page every month, even if you only use magazine cutouts or images you print from websites. The more you pages you add, the more you are able to experiment with your creativity and inspire yourself to keep traveling.

Travel journals make great coffee table books, or you can keep yours private and look through it when you need to relieve some wanderlust. I keep my travel journal on my desk to have handy when I’m seeking inspiration.

What about you? Are you ready to make your own travel journal? Be sure to send me pictures of ones that you create or you’ve created in the past. I’d love to see all the souvenirs you’ve collected.

Now let’s share how to make a travel journal that can inspire you and your friends on your next trip.