This mini book is brought to you by the M6, M1, and M25 motorways

... on the journey home from a lovely weekend in Lancashire.

BUT, before we get onto the book.. lets start at the very beginning...

We set off on Friday... and the journey up to Lancashire from Essex was a loooooong one! made (much) longer because it included the type of traffic jams where engines are turned off and people are starting to get out of their cars to stretch their legs....

There was nothing to do... we'd run out of 'I spy...' ideas.... and we'd eaten all the snacks!

but then we arrived to this...  and all was well in the world again...

I spent Saturday teaching a workshop for Rowan Tree Crafts to this lovely group of ladies...

It was held in the old railway station in Carnforth where they filmed the classic film 'Brief Encounter'... and I was only 'briefly' distracted by the piles of vintage suitcases around the station which is now a museum dedicated to the film.... (I love a vintage suitcase!! lol)

It was such a beautiful part of the country - definitely coming back 'oop north' soon!

On the journey home I wasn't going to be caught out again with nothing to do so I raided the carboot for my kit boxes from the class and gathered up some basics...

5 hours, 3 motorways, 1 dual carriageway and a stop at the services for snacks-&-a-'comfort-break' later I'd made a minibook from sample pieces, spare kits and bits from a magazine I bought at the services (very interesting & useful! though with regard to making this 'book' I really couldn't find a use for the eyelash curlers that came free with the magazine!)

The covers were made from one of the envelopes I use to store/hold kits... the flap is cut from a page of book text...

 ... it covers the words I wrote .. with a nod to old maps where at the edge it would say 'beyond this place there be dragons' .. or something like that...

The book is decorated with bits from spare kits (doily die cuts, book pages) and the pages were cut from a sheet of Smoothy (again from a spare kit) and a book I have to use for spare pages in class - in my mini book it provided pages and quotes..
The book itself is 8x11cm so a dinky little size!  Mainly because I was working on my lap in the car! (note to self: keep tray in boot of car!)

One set of pages was made by cutting and folding a page from the magazine I bought - it had really nice printed texture and I enjoyed the challenge of covering up the little girl! lol

Now you see her...

Now you don't!....

I like this centre spread - making the leaves look like trees on hills....

This was a lot of fun to make and kept me quiet for most of the journey... for which my husband is very grateful!
:o)

When I arrived home I sewed the pages together with simple bookbinding stitches and added a length of ribbon to wrap it closed.

It was satisfying to create something with so little supplies...!

x

The perfect travel art kit...

.... is there even such a thing - I find what I want to pack depends on where I'm going, what the holiday plans are and what my favourite tool/ media is at the time of packing! 

While packing I try to be practical and stern with myself (listening to my little inner voice asking 'do you really need that? will you actually use it??')  This year in the lead up to our holiday I made a list of all the equipment I used when making something and kept it at the side of my desk, things I used repeatedly... it was quite a useful little list - really showed what is 'essential' and what isn't.. I'd recommend trying it, could also show what is actually needed on the desk.... (as opposed to all the 'stuff' that stays on the desk just in case..)

-  -  -  -  -

When putting this blog post together I looked for the photo of the kit I took the last time we had a holiday in Mexico (3 years ago)....

 

...and compared it to the kit I took this year.  It made me smile because 3 years on:

* I'm still using the same bag.

* I still pack: Archival Black ink, a diddy alphabet stamp set, craft sheet, Snowflake Fresco Finish paint, long rubber in pencil form, Tombow glue stick, Cut'n'Dry foam, and stencils....

There is much more in there that you can't see in the photo:

* Koh-i-noor paints - they've been replaced by Winsor & Newton watercolours
* Decorative tape - 2 rolls packed above- tape didn't make it at all this year and I missed it - I thought I'd packed tape but hadn't... gggrrrr (1 inch brown paper tape - the type you have to wet the back of to make it stick - I was quite disappointed because I had plans for that!!)... still packing double sided tape :o) (I remember thinking I don't need to pack tape because I can create tape with paper and glue... yeah right!)
* The flower stencil/mask was swapped for alphabet stencils

This year I think I'd planned more for journaling and painting, rather than packing with no plans as was the case last time....

Here's this year's kit:

Its all the things I would normally use at home but travel sized - an A5 cutting mat and craft sheet, a short metal ruler, very limited amount of stamps - I didn't take any of my motif stamps because that helpful little inner voice of mine was saying - 'you don't need to take stamps of images you've drawn, you can draw them - draw new ones'... lol the voice has quite a good point don't you think! (might have to give my little inner voice a name...)(suggestions welcomed)

I also pack a limited amount of other 'stuff' to use - stencils, papers to use as backgrounds (book text, captions from magazines, gelli printed pages (NB I liked the ones shown in the photo so much I couldn't bring myself to use them!), scrapbook pages.... and in the bottom left of the corner of the photo is the sketchbook I took with me - 6x6in spiral bound.... (most of this came back with me... but its better to pack it than not - see above re the paper tape!)

I planned ahead by creating a colour chart of my Winsor  & Newton watercolours in the back of my sketchbook - so glad I did this - it was really useful.  They worked really well with the Fresco Finish paints I'd packed.  I killed a couple of my drawing pens by writing on wet paint (I have limited patience, but in fairness to me Mexico is VERY humid this time of year and things were taking longer to dry)(no, I didn't pack a heat gun!)... and so I rediscovered biro pens.. aaaah the good old biro pen!

I'm not sure there is a 'perfect' travel kit but this one worked for me (this year!)... its all down to personal preference isn't it?

My major fail this year was not taking my everyday sketchbook - the 25x25cm sketchbook I 'think' in  (it also works as a good work surface because of its size..) I found it really hard to sketch and think in 6x6in sketchbook... sigh... I missed it.

I must remember the next time I pack the 'perfect' kit:

some things just can't be exchanged for 'travel size'

x