Travel and Art – Join The Online Community

www.travelandart.net

Love to travel and journal? Me too! Now we have an online community dedicated to those passionate explorers who love to document their journeys. Whether you travel the big wide world or your world closer to home, Travel and Art is an online community where you can find a home, share photos of your journals, have your own travel blog and participate in forums and discussions related to travel journaling. As the group grows you'll even be able to meet fellow travelers. It's free to join and you can upload photos of your travel journals and even have a online travel blog of your own under the Travel & Art umbrella. It's a wonderful and easy way to join a global community of like-minded fellow travelers and journalers.

The brain child of the UK avid traveler and travel journaler, Gill (short for Gillian) McCowan, who loves to journal and has not only founded Travel & Art but also a website called - Journal Craft - an online store for journaling supplies. And..but wait there's more…she does a Journal Craft Inspiration Blog! I don't think this lovely woman ever sleeps! 

 

As a passionate journaler I was asked to be one of a handful of Founding Members of Travel & Art – I'll be sharing travel journaling tips and ideas and journal pages – maybe even doing an online class. I've been keeping travel journals for about 10 years now and can now remember where I've been! Travel journaling is easy and with a few supplies you can capture moments and experiences that might otherwise be forgotten. It all seems so vivid when we travel in the moment, but somehow the moments just get filed away with all the other life experiences we have. Looking at photos helps us retrieve the memories, but for me at least, not as well as a travel journal. What I really like about being part of the Travel & Art community is that other people post great journaling tips that just enrich my travel journal bag of tricks.

This is the cover of my Italy journal from the trip I took in May. I made it before I left from a postcard I had in my stash and a few other collage pieces from my bin. Easy. This time I used a Moleskine watercolor journal – nice heavy pages for gluing and little (and I do mean little) watercolor sketches.

I was tagging along on a business trip with my husband and had very little time to journal. But a few postcards and pages from the travel magazines that were free in our hotel room…

…scissors, glue stick, a small watercolor set and a black pen…

…and voila – travel journal. 

And lots of writing. I really like writing out my impressions and observations. Even a list can bring it all back so vividly. In this journal I jotted a list that added to as I went along – simple things – but as I look at it now, it all comes rushing back in suprisingly great detail – here are few:

• moonlight on the mediterranean sea
• the golden sunlight through the forest at sunset in Fiesole
• sipping a cappuccino in the market by Cibbreo's
• sipping wine overlooking Portofino at the bar
• the evening of the castle dinner
• reconnecting with the artist in Greve
• tea in the morning overlooking both Portofino and Florence

Click on over to Travel & Art and see how our fellow travelers journal their journeys.