South Korea Travel Journal

February 4, 2023February 8, 2023 by elainevitikainen ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Today, Ive set up my journal for my upcoming trip next month to South Korea. I have been using Moleskine for my travel journals for many years now but this time, I’m trying out the Traveler’s Notebook. And I’m really excited about it!

Over the years of creating a one pager travel journal, I realised many things. One of that is being brave to start and just go for it. If I’ve waited to be good enough to start creating travel journals, then I would have never created anything at all. It’s also important to think ahead what style to go for. I’ve finally decided the style for this travel journal. It took awhile to test things out but I think I’m now sure what I’m going for. Please check this out and see what you think. Thanks!

Many reasons to celebrate

January 18, 2023January 19, 2023 by elainevitikainen ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

There are many reasons to celebrate. A few days ago, I celebrated 3 years as a font maker, 2 years as an affiliate for Daebak Company and a year as a member of the Skillshare Teach Corps. This month, Emiko, a character that I created turned 4 and soon my entrepreneurship as EV Visuals will be 4 too! Yes, these are just numbers but it made me thankful to have gone this far. Thanks so much for your love and support. It means a lot to me!

These past few days, I’ve been thinking of a new class on Skillshare. This will take a longer time to prepare. It will be about Travel Journaling. I’ve travelled a lot and have journaled a lot so I thought I should give it a try. I can’t wait to get this started and I have a lot of ideas for it. Some of the class clips will be filmed abroad and the example project will be a country that I’ve been looking forward to visit. So please please look forward to this class! In preparation, I’ve created this journal for today.

I hope that everything is going well for you and that 2023 is proving to be a better year than the last!

Time flies!

January 9, 2023January 11, 2023 by elainevitikainen ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I can’t believe that we are almost halfway through January. But I’m happy how the year started and how much I created during the first weeks of January. Firstly, my new Skillshare class was published on the 6th. It’s about making transparent floral stickers. I really enjoy making transparent stickers. Check out the class here: https://skl.sh/3O50P8s

I’ve also finally archived my 2019 Travel Journal including all the paraphernalia that goes with it! So now I can continue to work on the COVID times Travel Journal and to prepare for the upcoming one.

I also started the year creating an acrylic painting. It was my first time to use a palette knife to paint. I had the wrong mixing palette so it was hard to mix the paints and to take the paint from it. It’s not great but I’m happy to have a try. 🙂

Also, my mini sketchbook project is moving forward and my journals are regularly filled. However, this week will be mostly dedicated to admin work. But that has to be done too. Please have a great week!

One Pager Travel Journals

December 14, 2022February 8, 2023 by elainevitikainen ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Three years ago I was digitalising some of my one pager travel journals that I’ve created on my sketchbooks. Who would have thought that travelling would not be possible in the next two years. But somehow, I haven’t been very keen in creating more journals when I got to travel again. I’ve started a new journal for it but haven’t gone too far. However, I’m getting back to it and now in a larger scale. My dream is to create a travel journal starting from planning a travel, during travels and after travels. I’m starting it now for my next travel in March. This includes maps, routes, hotels and cost, inland travels and cost, things to prepare, places to see, things to do, food to eat, things to buy… It’s fun but there’s a lot more thinking needed to put into it. It’s not just a take out your sketchbook while traveling and start to draw kind of thing…

If you want to see more of my travel journals, you can find them here! You can also find my scrapbooks here. If you have created travel journals, please don’t hesitate to share them with me. Thanks!

Here is my travel journal from 2019:

Venice Scrapbook

July 28, 2022January 8, 2023 by elainevitikainen ♥ 5 Comments

I’m really happy to have returned from a holiday in Venice and being able to immediately scrapbook my travel. This was my first time ever! As mentioned in my previous blog, I’ve collected all kinds of things from my travels but didn’t really know what to do about them up until now…

Next step is to create my travel journal as I was not able to make it on the go. I didn’t have the time during the trip and also, it was so hot to be drawing outside. Yes, the temperature reached to 37C! So it was a relief to return to Helsinki and enjoy a cooler weather.

Here is my travel journal from pre COVID. Hopefully, I can fill another sketchbook.

What do you do with the paper items you collect during a trip? Please let me know!

Travel Scrapbook: Create your own travel memories

June 8, 2022September 18, 2022 by elainevitikainen ♥ 2 Comments

Returning from my holiday in Krakow, Poland, I’ve collected all these things. I’ve always collected these kinds of things from my travels…

Having visited 50 countries, at one point I have so many of these – boarding passes, travel tickets, museum tickets, business cards, postcards, brochures, maps, receipts… I didn’t exactly know what to do with them that I started to throw them away until I thought that why not try scrapbooking.

Scrapbooking is an art of preserving and presenting our memories by combining photographs, clippings, memorabilia, souvenirs and journaling. Scrapbooking is not something new. We are all familiar to this.

So why Scrapbooking? Scrapbooking showcases my unique and personal style. It’s enjoyable as the process really takes me back from the moment of my holiday. And in the end, I have my travel memories together in one book.

Scrapbooking can be simple or it would be as extravagant by using many different kinds of materials from stickers, washi tapes, coloured papers, fancy cutter, stamps, etc. For me, I only use scissors, glue, paper, puncher and an A6 clear binder for my travel scrapbook. And of course, some writing tools. There are no rules, no right or wrong in scrapbooking. Just let your creativity flow and enjoy the process!

Travel,food and playlist

April 9, 2021October 6, 2021 by elainevitikainen ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

My book project has been completed and I was very excited to receive the printed version. I’m so happy how it turned out! This small book contains travel illustrations, food illustrations and playlists.

Traveling through illustrations

March 31, 2021January 8, 2023 by elainevitikainen ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Remember that time when traveling is possible? Here is my travel journal from June 2019. It was fun looking back on that time when traveling seems to have become a possibility for more and more people. But then you know how the story goes…

After June 2019, I also created my travel journals digitally. This one was about Iceland from October 2019. This was published on They Draw and Travel.

My last holiday trip abroad was in London in November 2019 which I journaled as a boarding pass and as a part of a small book project.

I will continue working on illustrating my past travels and will be posting them in the coming days. I hope you’ll do the same too. Creating travel journals has a way to bring you back to those happy memories.

You can find more of my travel illustrations here!

Pandemic creativity

March 6, 2021March 10, 2021 by elainevitikainen ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Creativity is not meant to dry up during the pandemic. In fact, I feel an overflowing daily dose of supply of creativity. It’s probably my way to distract myself and feel a sense of accomplishment, even more so during this strange time. No travels, no worries. We can always dream and anticipate the moment when we can. This pandemic too will pass!

Aside from work where I also get to illustrate, my official GIPHY channel has been approved on the 24th of February. As I write, my simple gifs have been viewed 54,8 M times. It feels amazing! I also created a TikTok account three days ago in preparation for a bullet journaling project. One of the things I’m really enjoying this moment is creating dream boarding passes. Yes, let’s dream! Here is your boarding pass to Helsinki.

I also created London, Japan, South Korea and New York boarding passes. I’m really enjoying this process. Which city would you like? Let me know! Have a great weekend to everyone.