Travel Scrapbooking

So I've been home for about two weeks now, and the other day I was feeling especially restless so I decided to do some scrapbooking to keep myself occupied. It's not really scrapbooking, to be exact. It's more straightforward and takes much less artistic skill. Basically you just throw everything you collected throughout your trip into a file and ta-da~ it's done. 

So these are some of the contents of my file for my recent trip to east Africa. It was quite a hassle lugging all these random "junk" along, like ticket stubs and all, seeing as we were backpacking and moving from place to place in our last month of travel, but I have always been such a hoarder and I don't regret it at all. Looking at every single item reminds me of something that happened on my journey (': 

The most precious of these have got to be my children's drawings and letters. We did so many art classes with them in school and we had stacks and stacks of drawings lying around our village house. Towards the end when we had to leave I couldn't bring everything with me, so the best I could do was to sieve through and pick a few of my favourites to keep as mementos. As we prepared to say our farewells in the final weeks, the children also started writing letters to us, saying they loved us or giving us their (parents') phone numbers so we could call them. One girl wrote a letter requesting to come along with me, because she also has a love for adventure and it just melted my heart. 

Materials needed:

- An A4 file, or whatever size you prefer

- Clear file pockets in varying sizes (e.g. A4, B5, etc.)

- Clear cardholders / postcard holders (these are also file pockets, but are specially for holding name cards, baseball cards, postcards, etc.)

- Paper clips (optional)

That's it. Then you set about slotting things into whichever pocket they can fit into. For example, ticket stubs, name cards, receipts etc. tend to go into baseball card or name card pockets. Some maps can fit into A4-sized file pockets, or I will fold them strategically to show my favourite place on the map before slotting it into an A4 file pocket. B5 file pockets tend to be really useful for small, odd-shaped things. Things that can't fit into any file pocket can be paper-clipped to the outside of a pocket.

On my recent trip to Japan, I found packs of these adhesive double-sided A4 photo pages (see above picture, left) at Daiso, the Japanese version of a dollar store. These fit perfectly into an A4 file and are really useful for displaying banknotes and photos. Previously I'd used clear postcard pockets for photos, which work as well, except that the orientation of the pockets tends to be portrait rather than landscape.

If you get plain files like that you can decorate the outside of it or label it, however you like. For the three plain coloured files I bought chipboard/felt alphabet stickers from craft shops and labelled them according to the year and country. My latest file for my trip to east Africa is the file with stripes, and for that I cut out an travel inspirational quote from a travel magazine and stuck it on the front. 

Right now I have five files, starting from 2010, although not all my trips have been scrapfiled yet...I still have four trips to document!

Valentine's ♡

Decided to bake some jam sandwich cookies as a last minute sorta thing, 'cause I don't really think V'day is such a big thing anymore, if it ever was. My firm belief is that everyday should be v'day if you love a person and you don't need to show your love only on a special day. Still, baking is always fun; don't really need an occasion for it.

Pre-baking - I think my dough rolling skills need much improvement

Out from the oven - added strawberry and apricot jam as filling

The cookies turned out quite well, although we didn't really eat them in the end, 'cause we were so stuffed from our lovely dinner. I gobbled them down the next day, oops.

A really pretty handmade card from the boyfriend ♥

And J made me a really pretty card; I must say he is getting better and better at scrapbooking/making cards. He always makes the cards he gives me 'cause he knows I love handmade stuff and I really appreciate the effort :') And he bought me the ♥-shaped Starbucks card~ ('cause I told him he had to), and gave me a lovely frame with pictures of us for me to bring along on my travels, such a darling.

And after that we went home and snuggled down to watch Sherlock. My kind of Friday night date ♥

Random crafts

Short update on the couple of quick crafts I've been doing here and there since the start of this year.

Noteboards I updated at the start of this year with newer photos, random scraps of things and quotes I ripped off magazines. Bought the cork boards at Daiso a couple of years ago, along with rolls of fabric tape to trim the frames of the boards. Glancing at photos of loved ones whenever I sit at the desk makes me happy and reminds me of how blessed I am to have these people in my life.

Pen designs that I also updated, out of boredom. They looked like this from a couple of years back. Ikea prints are love. Fancy pens make me happy too.

And this is a photo sent to me by my friend some time back, whose daughter I made the crochet beanie for. How adorable is she?? So glad it fits well (': Babies are such cute little angels, when they don't cry that is.

Tea party: flowers

Also adapted from Paper + Craft by Minhee and Truman Cho, these flowers were adapted from a template meant for making flower clip-ons for shoes. The template can be found here.

I traced out the template onto tracing paper, and cut dozens of pieces out from stock paper. And stuck them practically everywhere...like on my guestbook (above).

And made flower chains with them.

Basically, after cutting out 4 different sizes of the template, use a pencil and curl the petals of the flowers by rolling the pencil into the paper. Then glue the 4 different pieces together and voila, a flower is formed! Simple craft. The cutting of the pieces can be pretty tedious though.

mini scrapbook

this was made for one of my best girlfriends too. had a lot of fun making this. i have a bad habit of buying anything i like, so i tend to always end up with a lot of materials with no particular theme in mind...then try to think of a theme after S: maybe that's why they always don't end up looking as nice as those displayed in the scrapbooking shops. oh well. but it's not wrong to be whimsical!

foodie

sleepyhead

shopping queen

superstar wannabe

travel buddeh :D

magpie

made with much love <3

next up, baking session at my cousin's today! :D