I’ve Got Some Stories to Tell

Welcome to my stop on the June 2019 Pixel Scrapper “Storytelling” blog train! This month I have some really fun layout templates for you, created especially to help you tell your stories. The templates are in “Traveler’s Notebook” format, which is a tall, skinny format based on the proportions of a type of paper notebook (which is called a Traveler’s Notebook, of course). I’ve got four adorable story- and photo-focused templates as freebies for you here, and a large coordinating set with more templates over at Pixel Scrapper.

My partner and I recently went on our first camping trip together (featuring a surprise rainstorm!) and I used these templates to put together an album about our trip as soon as we came home. Before making this template set, I had never worked with the traveler’s notebook format before, and I’m in total awe of how fast my album came together. The TN format was a natural fit for breaking up the overarching story, which had tons of photos and stories I wanted to record, into these little brochure-sized snippets that were super fast and easy to put together. I have to admit, I went quickly from “hmm, why is everyone so into this Traveler’s Notebook thing? to “This is great, I’m a little addicted!”

From working with this format, I’ve discovered that Traveler’s Notebook format is amazing for storytelling. Each skinny page has much less real estate to fill than a big square 12×12 layout, so with many fewer decisions to make I was able to make my pages much more quickly. Each TN layout usually features just 0-2 photos per page and so ends up with a more dedicated focus than a pocket page, which makes this format perfect for a storytelling album.

The Stories to Tell TN templates are a fun assortment of templates that go together as an album to tell a story. Of course you can use them individually, as well, or mix and match. In the journaling spots on the templates, instead of just putting “lorem ipsum” filler text, I’ve included journaling prompts to help you tell your story at a richer, more detailed level. I know journaling is sometimes the hardest part, so I hope the questions and suggestions in these templates will help make it easier to scrap your stories!

I was excited to scrap in the TN format, but I also had no idea how I would print my pages. After a lot of back and forth, I decided to print them as pages in one of my photobooks. For photobooks I scrap 12×12 and then usually print an 11×11 photobook. I thought other 12×12 scrappers might want to play with the TN format, too, so I created a special “extra large” TN format. It has the exact same proportions as the standard size TN, but is sized up so that two of these XL pages look good on a 12×12 page (standard TN pages would look tiny). Here are two examples of a pair of XL templates put together onto a square 12×12 page.

For the blog train I have a set of 4 templates that coordinate with the rest of the Stories to Tell album. I love these “The Best Parts” and “The Worst Parts” pages – the camping trip I was scrapping ended up being pretty hard, thanks to the unexpected week-long rainstorm, and it was great to have a place to record all the funny and hard stuff as well as the highlights. I hope you enjoy these and, as always, I would love to see what you make! Download links are below the preview.

Both download links are for the SAME materials, you only need to choose one. I provide the Mediafire one just in case the direct download Dropbox link is not available due to high traffic.

Direct download link (may not be available due to bandwidth overage):
DOWNLOAD “STORIES TO TELL” TEMPLATES
Mediafire link:
DOWNLOAD “STORIES TO TELL” TEMPLATES

If you’d like to make a full album, like I did for my camping trip, you can find Volume I of the Stories To Tell template set at Pixel Scrapper:

Be sure to check out the rest of the Pixel Scrapper “Storytelling” blog train, for more great templates, kits, and designs using this dreamy color palette and great theme!