When we took our trip to Minneapolis this summer I wanted a photo album to memorialize our trip. I’m notoriously bad at printing photos, but I felt like creating an album for this short, specific period of time would be doable, even for me. After seeing a few posts on Simply Alexandra about her experience with Project Life, I knew I wanted to do something similar for our trip album. Alexandra and I got to meet up in person this summer, and we thought it would be fun to collaborate on a post about documenting travel.
Overall, I’m happy with how my album turned out. I wanted to share a few things I learned from the process of documenting our trip, as well as a few things I’ll do differently when I create another album.
{minneapolis photo album – things I learned}
- Take notes while traveling. I took my bullet journal on the trip and wrote down a few things I wanted to remember about the places we visited, plus a rough outline of what we did each day. It was really helpful to refer to that when I was putting my album together.
- Add memories to pages, not just photos. I love the idea of looking back and my album and reading the notes I added to some of the pages, such as funny things Jona said or the memorable meal I ate somewhere. Sometimes I share the memories right on the page, other times I wrote on a card and tucked it behind a photo, something I learned from seeing one of Alexandra‘s albums.
- Use color to bring the page together. I didn’t always have a full spread of photos that all related, so I tried to use the same accent colors across the pages so it looked like photos belong together.
- Include a balance of photos of people and photos of scenery. I am inclined to make my kids the subject of 99% of the photos I take, but I tried to hold myself back and take some scenic shots too. Or at least make sure that there’s some interesting scenery that is visible behind Jona and Violet. 🙂
{things I plan to do differently on my next album}
I’m sharing these over on Simply Alexandra’s blog; click here to read them and to see her documenting tips. She’s become an expert at this so prepare to be inspired!
{Alexandra’s perspective: what she plans to do differently next time}
Hi Shea Lennon readers! I’m Alexandra from Simply Alexandra where you will find me chatting about goals, books, travel, documenting, and other lifestyle goodness. I’ve been doing Project Life for about a year and a half, and I love how it helps me practice self-care by working with my hands! I had a blast creating this section of my mini album with photos from my recent trip to New Orleans (my very favorite US city… so far!) Here are some things I want to try next time, when I create my NYC spreads, eep cannot wait!
I’ve done quite a few of these now, but there are definitely some things I want to focus on in the future!
- Take More Photos of US! I take wayyyy too many photos when we travel, but I notice that sometimes I forget to take them of me and KC. I like those photos best, they’re often silly or fun to look back on, so I want to focus more on that on future trips, that way there’s more to document!
- Use Shea’s Idea of Taking Notes in my Planner! I love how intentional Shea was with her journaling, and keeping notes of things that she wanted to remember in her bullet journal! I would love to do that in my planner/phone as the days go by on our next trip to see how it influences my journalling. In general, I’d just like to do more journalling. 😉
- Try Out Some Full-Page Photos/Spreads. I have wanted to get some photos printed at a 6×8 size for a while, and haven’t pulled the trigger. I love the way it looks to have one large photo, so I really want to try this next time! I would also like to do some spreads that have a 6×8 piece of paper with smaller photos/etc. This will mix it up a bit so everything is not the same few layouts! 🙂
I’d love to hear about how you document your travel and adventures! Share in the comments below. Thanks so much Alexandra for collaborating with me!
