12 months, 5 continents, 1 Journey of a lifetime

Well, I obviously miscalculated something because I thought I had till the end of the month to enter the Bird is the Word challenge, but sadly it's closed. I must admit, this was my first time to enter one of their challenges and as they have several challenges going at once the closing dates are very confusing and I obviously didn't look correctly. So, instead you get to see what I created, and I love how this layout turned out!

The challenge word was Journey which you had to use either in the title or the journalling. In 2006/07 we took 12 months off work/school and travelled around the world. I haven't scrapped many photos from that trip and had been wanting to make a title page for the album, so this was a good excuse to do that. Hopefully this will kick start me to doing more pages for the album.  

I started with a sketch from Sketch Support. Their sketches are awesome and the fact that they give you all the dimensions for the paper pieces is even better! I had a travel album kit I bought a couple of years back at a craft fair and finally got that out to use it. The background is kraft coloured from Stampin Up. The papers I used are from Kaisercraft, and the chipboard, cardstock stickers, clear acetate ribbon and felt embellishments are from the Junkitz Destinations collection. The "Corroded Alphabet" title stickers are from Paper Loft, with the smaller letters being Been There Done That rubons. The date stickers are from Kaisercraft.

Initially, before looking at the papers I had, I had made a map to fit the bottom left spot, and was going to print it out with the words on it. Then when I saw the map on the paper fit the spot exactly, I decided to use that instead. I printed out my map, coloured the back with a pencil, then traced over the letters so they would transfer onto the patterned paper. It didn’t work perfectly, but it was good enough to be able to trace over with my Sakura gel pens.

I love how I could use lots of the chipboard, felt and stickers to make several embellishment clusters. All in all, I'm really pleased with how this layout turned out, and it's now the title page in my trip album! And in case you're interested, the photos are - top row: Grand Palace, Bangkok, Thailand; a park off Island Park Drive, Ottawa, Canada; Machu Picchu, Peru. Bottom row: Easter Island, Chile; Kinderdijk, the Netherlands.

Hope you like my layout - please leave me some comments if you do! Till next time, happy days!

Francine