California Journal

 Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. 

Some of you may remember seeing some of my other trip journals. When I take a trip, I like to collect paper and paper-ish souvenir bits.  I bring them home and create a trip journal. My journals used to be  scrapbooks, but then even those scrapbooks became more like an art journal, so now my trip journals have a little bit of everything.

I've been slowly working on a journal from the trip my husband and I took in November to California.

You also may remember the cover as I showed you that before, but at that point I didn't plan on using it for a travel journal. I did find this great California sticker on my travels so I added that, and so this journal  has become my travel journal. I'm not sure what else, if anything, I'll do to finish off the cover.

I thought today I'd share a few of the pages I have so far created.

Above is the inside front cover. The white California shape is the peel off part of the sticker from the front. I added the gold glitter to it (after all, California is the Golden State) and put the little paper blobs in the areas we visited. I actually needed to use the glitter because without it my little black location blobs wouldn't stick on the plastic  shape. Even though I wasn't originally going to go with glitter, I'm glad I needed to do that because the glitter adds some extra texture to my page.

The centerpiece of this page (above) is the piece of napkin that I received while on the plane. It was perfect for creating a trip itinerary, even if it went down a bit out of kilter. (grrr) I added the ruler because it was a little over six hour flight, but  I'm not sure I like the ruler now. Oh well.

And below, it is always fascinating how bright cities are after flying some distance and looking down into a lot of dark.

Next is my page for the LeBrea Tar Pits.  The parking receipt lifts up so you can read what the ticket below it says.

The other place we visited (besides doing a bit of sight-seeing from the car) in LA was  Warner Brothers Studio. We took one of their tours.  I wasn't sure about this activity, but it ended up being a lot of fun. 

At the end of the tour they had a museum with some movie memorabilia.  Part of that museum was a Harry Potter exhibit with interactive exhibits and some items from the films. One thing my husband and I did was sit under the sorting hat. 

A long time ago I did the on-line sorting hat "test",  and I came out a Hufflepuff. Under the hat in the museum, I came out a Slytherin.  I don't think I'm anything like a Slytherin, but it makes a good story for the journal. My husband said it makes sense that the hat said I'm a Slytherin since my blood vessels are filled with venom not blood-ha-ha. 

I knew I wanted to create  a page about that event, so I bought these 2 stickers in the gift shop. The little tag on the right page of my journal includes the story, and I drew the sorting hat you see there..

I know some of you are Harry Potter fans, so here's a few photos from that part of the museum. These photos are not included in my journal.

My husband taking a wand using lesson.

Me in Harry's room under the stairs of 4 Privet Drive.

Some memorabilia.

My husband is in the living room at Harry's aunt's and uncle's home when all the letters inviting him to come to Hogwarts arrive.

I really love the flying car scene in The Chamber of Secrets, and here's the car, or at least 1 that they used in the film.

And finally, here's a collection of wands. Unfortunately you can't read which wand belongs to which person. Perhaps they wrote the names in invisible ink. 

And finally, here's one more page from the studio tour in my journal. 

My daughter was at our house dog sitting for the 10 days we were gone, and she is also a big Harry Potter fan. At the tour gift shop (of course they have a gift shop), we saw a Hufflepuff shirt we thought she would like, and we picked it up as a way to thank her. The lady at the cashier wrapped the shirt in this great Bugs Bunny tissue paper. You can see I used part of it for this page in my journal.

And since this "wabbit" has a face, I am linking this page up to this month's challenge at Art Journal Journey. This month I am hosting and the challenge is "Let's Face It". 

Thanks for visiting. Hope your first week of the new year is going well!