Origami Travel Notebook

 Travel and I have a funny relationship. I love going places, seeing things, being inspired and out of my normal element and I especially enjoy the "head clearing" aspect of getting away for a bit. But, on the flip side I love home. And, sometimes find it hard to leave. There will be a bit more travel for me in the next two years than usual and I am really looking forward to that.

So, it was nice that I had some quite seasoned travelers in my workshop this past Saturday as I led them along in making their own Origami Travel Notebooks! We had a lively morning talking about travels while working on our books.

this is the folded structure with pockets - oh look how nicely the class templates and my Creativebug card fit so nicely into the pocket!

The Origami Travel Notebook is a structure that I devised. The signatures, or sections, are made up of the Origami Pamphlet structure (which I did not make up but rather it is, I am told, a Japanese folding technique originally used to make wallets). One of my students taught me this ingenious little structure, and I immediately loved it, but also saw the structure acting as a signature, or sections, in a paper case book. The subtitle for this workshops is: With Too Many Pockets to Mention because each section holds 6 pockets and depending on how many sections you add...well...you can do the math.

way too many pockets to mention...

It is a fabulous structure for storing little bits of ephemera picked up during travels, making notes, storing a small map, and drawing and writing (since there is also a multi-paged section tucked into the origami sections).

For the covers we used both Cave Papers and Hark Handmade Papers. These papers are gorgeous! and tough! Being handmade papers they possess beautiful deckled edges that can sometimes be a challenge to incorporate into a paper case cover since they are not always square. So I made the suggestion to cut off the deckle, save it, and work it back into the composition of the cover.

this student made beautiful strata with her deckled edges - she will add stitching later

After the books were assembled students spent the rest of their time adorning their books with pieces of maps from my collection.

See more examples from my blogpost last year. And, if you want to learn to make the folded origami structure used as sections in this book you can find my online class at Creativebug under a slightly different name: Six Pocket Keepsake Book.

Happy Travels!