travel album {before}

I wanted to have a fun journal/scrapbook/mini-album to take with me to document our upcoming house hunting trip to Washington. Now even though I've made a ton of mini books before, I felt I needed a fresh approach to this one so I took an online class by Ali Edwards and it really gave me some new ideas for this book.

I used bits & pieces from several Noel Mignon kits including Jump & Jive, Very Virginia & Office Party (& there may have been another one in there!). I added a few bits from my own stash but the majority of goodies were from the kits. I just grabbed here & there to throw this one together. All of these photos are obviously the before pics. After my trip I'll share with you what the completed album looks like...hopefully with lots of fun tidbits from our travels :)

I started with a transparency for the cover with a white tag on the inside stamped with a fun airplane that I stitched around. Just a note - if you keep the bobbin the same color as your paper (in this case I used brown thread & white in the bobbin) you won't have the thread color showing through on the other side. Of course, if you're a sewer you already know this!

I also added some of that great twine to the white tag...can't get enough of it! Peeking behind that tag is a map that I scanned & printed out on white cardstock. Shhhh...don't tell!! I'm planning on getting another map to add to this book on my trip.

One of 2 Maya Road envelopes in this book. Love them. This envelope I'm planning on using to store extra Instax pics...my new favorite toy :)

Jillibean Soup shipping tag with some more shipping tags peeking out behind that backed with that wonderful Pink Paislee patterned paper that came in the Jump & Jive kit. Just perfect for this book!

You can also see I used some rub-ons from one of the kits (Office Party I think). I absolutely {love} the new Echo Park papers, especially this printed paper...and I love the fact that there's several sheets in the new kit!

Does everyone love that Jenni Bowlin stamp as much as I do??? For most of the pages that were patterned paper I actually cut the paper twice the width that I needed it, folded in half & adhered down to itself. I've found it makes the pages a bit more sturdier than simply cutting one piece of paper.

As soon as I pulled out the Echo Park paper with all of the tags on one side I immediately cut them apart & knew they would work great for this book. I added an October Afternoon travel sticker at the top (I used those stickers in several places in this book).

More of those great Echo Park tags from Jump & Jive along with Elle's Studio banners.

I used an envelope template to make that envelope from patterned paper. And that's it! Pretty simple...but it will look so different once filled with photos & memorabilia :)