50+ Great ideas for Scrapbooking Vacation Travel

 In retirement, hubby and I are hoping to explore every nook and cranny of this magnificent continent of ours, from Alaska's spectacular national parks to the MCM neighborhoods of Coral Gables, from lighthouse B&Bs to Elvis shrines to really big balls of twine.  

As an ardent scrapbooker, part of the fun will be capturing these adventures in scrapbook form. But how do I capture the spirit of all these wonderful destinations without becoming repetitive? Clearly I'm going to have to stretch beyond pictures + journaling + brochures to keep things interesting! 

For this reason, I've begun capturing a list of template ideas that should help me introduce variety into our travel layouts, which I am sharing here because what works for me may work for others, right? 

1. Turn the name of the destination into an acronym. Ex: BADLANDS could become "bands of brilliant color, ancient, desolate, lovely, arid, national park, deeply spiritual, serrated slopes of stone"
2. Trace the name in HUGE letters over both pages, then cut out the letters and fill the open letter-shaped frames with pictures from the destination. (Sort of like those old postcards!)
3. Use a HUGE letter stencil to cut the name of the destination out of various brochures depicting parts of the vacation you want to remember
4. Create a crossword puzzle with clues that capture favorite activities or memories.
5. Create a word search! But instead of listing words to find, create "clues" to force you to remember word and relive the associated memory. 
6. Create a bingo board of potential fun experiences and then use markers to indicate which ones you were able to accomplished
7. Organize the page as a series of top 10 lists - top 10 coolest houses, top 10 coolest gardens, etc.
8. Create a "mad libs" journal entry with answers that end up relating a fairly accurate (if slightly silly) version of the visit. I think this would be great for eventful trips, like stays in busy cities.
9. Affix a map of the area to the scrapbook page and then add callouts annotating what happened in each area
10. Turn your photos into postcards by cutting out squares of paper the same size, formatting them to look like the back of a postcard, and using them to record your journaling. Address them to your kids, your long-lost grandmom who always wanted to travel, or your fish! 
11. Stop by a local antique store and pick up a few antique postcards of the place you have seen. Then proceed as described above. :-)
12. Retell your trip in the form of a real estate listing. Works great if you destination is a mansion, historic home, or historic area
13. Retell your trip in the form of an article for the Travel section of a major newspaper. Be sure to include quotes from your family! (Lots of great newspaper templates out there on the internet)
14. Describe/relive a memorable meal in the form of a restaurant review. As before, be sure to include quotes from your family :-)
15. Retell your trip in the form of a magazine article. Part of the fun is picking the right magazine template - perhaps Sports Illustrated for a trip that includes skiing or diving?  Rolling Stone for a trip heavy on live music? National Geographic? History Magazine? Life? 
16. Invite a "guest journalist" to provide a different perspective on the day's events - could be the ghost of someone who's associated with the location, or your pet, or your car, or a local squirrel who spent the day following you around, or your exhausted feet! 
17. Turn your day into a multiple choice test. Bonus points for funny fake answers. (Ex: "Wen we finally arrived at the B&B, Amanda immediately (1) kissed the pavement in relief, (2) threw up, (3) hugged the proprietor, (4) snatched the phone from my hand swearing that she would never, ever let me do my own navigation again.")
18. Turn the town, mansion or resort property you visited into a Clue-like board game with cards that commemorate activities that happened in each room/location
19. Transform the day into a story for children. I tend to favor the old standards, like "Once Upon a Time ..."
20. Transform the day into a coloring book, with captions to explain the significance of each picture
21. Add a "spinner" that lists all the places you visited at a certain destination
22. Create an annotated timeline of the day
23. Capture the events of the day in a poem, or series of haikus
24. Create an advertisement for the destination or town, lauding its many desirable features
25. Create a movie poster for the day that "teases" all the things that happened
26. Create a 2D version of shelves in a visitors center and clutter them with objects that commemorate things that happened on your vacation
27. Turn your journaling into a rebus by using images to replace select words. 
28. Capture your experiences as a series of "Bad Amazon Reviews" in which you find absolutely nothing worth recommending to others.  (Ex: "Grand Canyon- Way too many rocks. Some of the rocks are red. Some aren't. Big whoop. Also not enough forests or shade, and where are the bears?")
29. What your destination used to look like vs. what it looks like now. You can use brochure images or your own sketches. I'm going to make mine funny - the first version is going to be tourists behaving respectfully, while the second version shows tourists behaving the way they're wont to do now ...!
30. Various annotated receipts showing how much you spent and what you spent it on. Money provides a surprisingly useful scaffold for tracking the events of a day. 
31. Annotate each picture you include with a funny Twitter post/explanation.
32. Tell the story of  your day in the form of a simple stick cartoon
33. Tell the story of your day as an exchange of texts with someone who definitely does not share your level of enthusiasm. (Ex: "We ate alligator!" "Let me guess - tastes like chicken.")
34. Connect the dots, where each dot is an annotated event and the final picture is something that represents the destination, or the day
35. Create a faux miniature golf course with holes that describe each event/attraction of your day. 
36. Expected vs. reality 3D "flip & reveal" page - perfect for sharing funny anecdotes about what you expected to exeprience vs. what actually happened.
37. If the destination is associated with a strong smell (ex: maple, sea salt), capture the smell on some sort of scrap, then seal the scent in a sealed wax packet for enjoying later!
38. Create a graph where the x axis is a timeline of your day and the y axis ranks the amount of"funness" (0-10). Then plot the events of the day on the graph as apropriate, with annotations to explain highs and lows
39. Include a tall "signboard" cutout and attach arrows pointing to all the locations or events you attended
40. Use white paper to matte your pictures so that they look like old-fashioned Polaroids and/or slides. Perfect for creating a travel page with a nostalgic feel.
41. Use a brochure or other literature from the destination as your backdrop or border. (Make sure to spray with acid-neutralizing spray before posting, to prevent yellowing!) 
42. Cut out a black asphalt road or hiking trail, then commemorate the events of your day/trip as funny informative signs, billboards, or historical markers along the way
43. List everything you did during the day on a separate square, then beneath the square leave a place for both you and your travel partner to "rank" the event on a scale of 1-10, Olympic judge-style. Great for those trips when one partner is having the time of their lives while the other partner is quietly dying inside.
44. Assign each experience or picture a superlative, either serious or silly (ex: Tackiest Hotel Room, Best Hot Dog Stand Actually Shaped Like a Hot Dog ...)
45. Tell the story of your trip in numbers. First create squares of paper that list numbers that represent memorable events - then add journaling to explain the significance of each number. (If you print the journaling on vellum, you can position the anecdote over top of the number.) 
46.  Create a calendar that spreads over both page and then jot down, calendar style, what you did on each day
47. Depict your day or trip in the form of a maze, with various stops that you have to navigate between. 
48. Tell the story of your trip or day in patches - those souvenir embroidered patches that most gift stores sell. You can even "sew" the patches onto the page
49. Use library cards to tell the story of your day - the title tells the destination, the "description" describes the content of the memory associated with the title. 
50. If you're at a science destination, use squares from the periodic table to spell out your title or header. 
51. Capture your day in the form of a Jeopardy game with categories that match your major activities and questions designed to capture favorite memories
52. Tell the story of your day or trip in the form of a flow chart, with yes/no decisions guiding the way through your adventure! (Using a Choose Your Own Adventure format might be fun too!)
53. Pick an icon or object that symbolizes your destination and use it as the theme for your page (ex: if you're at an apple orchard, cut out frames in the shape of apples and place your picture beneath them
54. Retell your day in the form of a recipe (ex: "Recipe for a Perfect Day at Yellowstone Park"). Be sure to list ingredients (perfect weather, bears...) and then how you combined the ingredients to create memories
55. Retell your day in the form of an "episode guide" for a podcast. (Ex: "Every episode this week will be highlighting a different memory from our trip to Amelia Island. Today's episode: lunch at Jimmy's Oyster Hut. Tomorrow's episode: Touring the Island by bike; or, Why we had to cancel diving the only coral reef in the U.S. because my butt hurt.")
56. Transform your pictures into postage stamps by giving them jagged edges. Then piece them together in the form of a sheet of commemorative postage stamps
57. Shape your various photos into large jigsaw pieces, then loosely assemble them so that your day forms a nice, symmetrical whole
58. Center your photos on pattered squares and stitch them together in the form of a quilt. Ideal for something cozy, like a stay at a B&B or spa.
59. Create a giant checkerboard template and then write your memories on giant checkerboard chips
60. Transform you and your partner into faux paper dolls and then sketch clothes that tell the story of your day or trip