Welcome to my post where I share my Portugal travel album with you that I made for a trip to the Algarve Coast in May. While on vacation I kept a travelogue for a couple of days (you can read about my experiences here), but I didn't include any photos in there so I knew I wanted to create an extra album. And here it is!


For the title page I chose a photo of a lemon tree and the blue skies and glued it onto a kraft cardstock divider that came with the album. These gorgeous letter stickers are from Thickers and I just love them so much...


I don't remember where it was but I saw someone punch half circles and attach them to patterned paper. I tried to recreate that here and I really like the result.

I choose 6 of my favourite images from the trip, resized them to 2x2 and printed them on one 4x6 photo. Then I cut them out with my circle punch (one of my favourite scrapbooking tools) and cut them in half. Next, I looked for 6 filler cards in my 2x2 patterned paper stash, circle punched them as well and cut them in half as well. I arranged matching pairs and attached them together with my tiny attacher.


Forever in love with grid circles.


This is my current desktop wallpaper (found on Design Love Fest) that I printed on vellum.


My favourite beach.


While I was working on the album, Ali Edwards had a Pinterest giveaway/campaign running, and she offered these pretty travel themed digital stamps for free. I really like her handwriting.




I didn't journal much in my album because of the separate travelogue, plus I kept a lot of notes in my Traveller's notebook. However, I wanted to include some words here and there and I chose to pick 10 highlights from our trip and just wrote some thoughts down. As I like repetition and consistency in my albums, I used 10 small kraft circle stickers, stamped the number and wrote down the name of the place or the activity I wanted to remember.



This photo is special because it shows two amazing gifts from Chris. For Christmas, he gave me an instax camera (yay!) and I shot one film in Portugal. So cute! Second, for my birthday he had a custom stamp made for me which says "Kathi & Chris"... Do I need to say more?




#adventure because we went on a speed boat trip on the Atlantic Ocean to see dolphins.

Magical moments.







This is the last page. Sunset and the ocean.


I was hoping I could fit all of my summer travels into one binder, but with the Portugal pages it's nearly full already...

Thanks for reading, sorry for the photo-heavy post and see you soon!

- Kathi



Supplies I used:

• Simple Stories black & kraft 6x8 album
• Simple Stories page protectors 
• Thickers - white and gold alphas
• Studio Calico Seven Paper - kraft label stickers
• Ali Edwards digital stamps
• Authentique Seaside word stickers 
• Project Life Everyday Edition chipboard stickers

Travel albums are among my favourite things to create.

What I like about them is that they document a very specific and - at least for me - a rather limited amount of time. Plus, all the photos have the same feeling and sometimes I already gather ideas of how I want to document a trip while still on vacation.


This is what happened when I spend a week in Denmark last year. I bought some blue and white watercolour gift-wrapping paper (you can see it in the photo above) in a cute little Danish store and I knew right away I wanted to use it for my travel album.

I wrote our destination with a black sharpie onto vellum paper and attatched it to the gift-wrapping paper. So simple!


While I was in Denmark I took some time to try watercolour painting myself. Even if we went in the early summer, we had rather cold weather, so I didn't mind spending some time on indoor activities. For my album I simply cut up some of the watercolour paintings to fit into the pockets. All I painted were plus sings and other minimal patterns and I really like how they turned out.



Throughout the album I included some digital templates and word art by Paislee Press (Pictures & Words No. 14). I love how the digital elements add a contrast to the textured watercolour paper.







I hope you enjoyed this peek into my travel album and see you soon for my new Portugal travel album!

- Kathi

Supplies I used:

• Simple Stories page protectors for 2x2 photos 
• Simple Stories page protectors for 3x4 photos
• Simple Stories page protectors for 4x6 photos
• Simple Stories page protectors for 3x4 and 4x6 photos
• Paislee Press Pictures & Words No. 14
• Watercolour Paper
• Vellum 
• black sharpie

In May I travelled to Portugal with Chris. We spent a wonderful week on the south coast and for me it was more or less the first week off in 2016. I would finally have the time to do nothing at all, to sit in the sun and drink coffee, to swim in the ocean and to spend some quality time with Chris.

The scrapbooker in me got a little over enthusiastic and already imagined many ways in which I would document our travel adventures.


Right before we left I picked out a cute Rifle Paper notebook that I wanted to use as a travelogue.


I quickly assembled a scrapbooking-on-the-road kit: I filled the little bag that came with the Week In The Life kit with some stamps, ink, paper, washi tape, alphabet stickers and other small bits and pieces.


On the first day in Portugal I sat down at night and wrote about our day, glued and stamped in my notebook. I'm totally not used to keeping a journal or anything, so it felt a little out of my comfort zone to document without any photos or page protectors.


These blush labels and the stamp set are from the Studio Calico Lisse Street Project Life kit.



I love these little vacation stamps! Unfortunately I didn't take my Stazon ink with me but a little (cheap?) stamp pad so the stamping didn't turn out that great.



Documenting day 2 was fun as well since I had some time to kill while Chris went surfing.



However, on day 3 I felt like "Oh I have to sit down and write something in my notebook and create a beautiful page" all while I would have preferred to just relax with Chris (it was a vacation after all..). So after these pages I just stopped. I felt really bad at first because I didn't stick to my plan and I "wasted" a precious notebook.



In the end I decided it would be ok and that I would make a regular travel album like for my other trips as soon as I was home. I continued taking daily notes in my Midori which looks a lot less fancy but does the job anyway:


I'm not sure yet whether I'll try to keep a travelogue again. Maybe on a trip with more down time when there's actually some spare time for documenting. But on a vacation like this with lots of activities, sleep and quality time together, scrapbooking just isn't a priority.

Last week I started working on my travel album and I hope to share it in the next few days with you. After all, Portugal is one of my top five travel destinations...


Has anyone of you succeeded in keeping a travelogue? I'd love for you to share your thoughts in the comments.

Supplies I used:

• Rifle Paper notebook
• Midori Traveler's Notebook 
• black pilot pen
• Stamps, lables and other embellishments from the Lisse Street and Odyssey Studio Calico Project Life kits 

Welcome to the last day of my Week in the Life album! I'm so excited to finish this project.

It has been a lot of work and a lot of fun. But before I'll share some overall thoughts about Week in the Life, let's have a look at my Saturday pages.

In case you've missed them, you can find the other days here: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.



I followed more or less the same formula for each day. I like this repetition because it makes a very colourful album less busy.



On Saturday, I took fewer photos than on the other days so I was able to slip the day of the week card in one of the pockets. Compared to the other days, I prefer them outside of the pockets because I think they add more layers and interest that way.



On Saturday we had a total change of weather from summer dress to cashmere sweater weather.


I ended my album with another full page 6x8 photo of my favourite flowers because I just can't get enough of them and they are so photogenic...



And this is it!! My album is hardly wide enough to fit all my pages. I think adhering the wood veneer numbers onto the chipboard dividers is what made it a little bulky in the end.



Here are my overall thoughts on this project:

• Week in the Life is so much fun! I really enjoyed taking the time to intentionally document a week in my/our life.
• I chose a very busy week that showed no routine at all. I think it turned out okay, but I'm considering doing another week that feels more regular to me.
• Before starting Week in the Life, I looked at the notes I took after doing December Daily and this really helped to set my intentions and my commitment.
• Repetition is key! Getting the album together for each day is a lot easier when I don't have to make new choices again and again but just stick to a simple formula of page order, design principles and embellishment routine. 
• My biggest struggle is always the journaling and it definitely didn't help that on some days I took notes on the printable sheets that Ali offers, on others I wrote something down on my computer, on others I used my phone and on others I didn't record anything at all. Note to self for the next time: decide on one way to take notes and stick to it. Maybe I'll use journaling prompts (like these cute boxes) to make things as easy as possible. 
• Next time, it would be great if I could finish my album a bit earlier than I did now.

I can't wait until Week in the Life happens again!

- Kathi

Supplies I used:

• Week in the life album kit (with the grey stories album)
• 3x8 page protectors
• Days of the week chipboard dividers
• jet black stazon ink
• cork circle stickers from the Studio Calico Canyonlands Documenter Kit