UK SOUVENIR ART JOURNAL

I recently shared my souvenir travel journal from my trip to Australia, but I was actually lucky enough to also travel to the United kingdom last summer. I had an 1800’s Souvenirs of London book that I purchased years ago just waiting for me to get to London so I could use it.

I decided to make it into a ringed journal so I could expand it as much as I needed. I lined the inside covers with the covers of an old English magazine, also from the 1800’s.

As I’m sure you know by now, I have a love for vintage photo booths and I knew the hotel we booked had one in the lobby, so I already had the plan to use it daily to create a starter page for each day. So I made tabs for each day we’d be traveling. I just used index tabs, a date stamp, and black ink pad all from Amazon to do this.

Below is a photo I snapped quickly to text a friend while I was journaling when I had some downtime, but even though the photo is low quality, I wanted to share it with you so you can see how I work. I am working on a post about what I bring to ‘journal-on-the-go’ using this case, that I blogged about years ago. You can read about it more in my Journaling On the Go Post.

This journal is pretty self explanatory. I grabbed a tube map to create a page as seen below. I grabbed business cards every place I went. 

Exploring Notting Hill I found another (non vintage, but I’ll take it) photo booth. We went to the globe there and I loved the cushion hire ticket so added that along with part of the program.

One night we headed to the Ace hotel in Shoreditch for a drink, and to use their vintage photo booth, so that day I had two half strips to use! And in case you are wondering, yes, I have the most patient traveling companion to put up with all the photobooths (on this trip and always).

I saved a brochure from his favorite thing we did, and I marked it as his favorite with a vintage Dennison label and a prize ribbon punch.

I added photos when I got home, but like usual I made place holders for them as I went. 

We were in Hyde park and I wanted ice cream, which is where we discovered 99’s….

which led to my favorite moment being documented the same way. 

On day 6 we woke up early, used the vintage photo booth one last time, and headed to the train station to take a train to Glasgow, Scotland. 

We really enjoyed the ride and the scenery, and the potatoes chips they called crisps. I even saved the bag (I wiped all the grease and crumbs out with a damp cloth). 

I used the sleeve for our room key as part of the day page for our first day there. The only hiccup was that we couldn’t find any photobooths, vintage or otherwise. But we didn’t dismay since I have a vintage style photo booth app on my phone so we took some with that and I printed them when we got home and cut them down to size.

One of my favorite things in Glasgow was the discovery if tunnocks tea cakes, our hotel room had some in it for us, and I was hooked. I loved the packaging and the sweet treat itself. I was so excited I sent a photo to a friend at home who informed me I can get them locally at World Market,, but I didn’t let that stop me from eating more of them while I was there.

I used the wrapper and the box as pages in the journal. And of course we needed to purchase an umbrella, so that tag made it in as well. 

Our flight home included mile high tea – so part of the cute box it came in was my last entry / page in the journal.

This journal is stuffed full, so I did limit myself to only sharing 20 or so photos of it so I wouldn’t bore you!

Below are some of my favorite purchases – at a Covent Garden market I found a stall selling old letterpress blocks and purchased some to add to my collection at home. What I loved most about this journal as the little “shelf”‘ I also got that said London on it. The best souvenir I could ask for!

If you want to learn more, I plan on doing a future post about my favorite ringed journal spreads and how I make them. You can keep up to date with my posts on Bloglovin‘ or Instagram.

Please note that I do use amazon affiliate links in this post.