Painted leather Traveler's Notebook covers, on the outside....

Or...why I don't paint the inside of my covers with the same acrylics based leather dyes I use on the smooth outside.

I've gotten a few questions from people asking me if I could paint the inside of the leather Traveler's Notebook covers. The answer to that would have to be yes, of course I can paint the inside of the covers, however I choose not to do it. For a reason, a very good reason in my mind. =)

I do dye the insides of the covers with alcohol or oil based leather dyes. So there's plenty of color to be had ...

for instance, the above Nebula Traveler's Notebook, has a purple inside =)

To explain why I choose not to paint the inside, I would first have to explain something about the vegetable tanned leather I use.

Painted Traveler's Notebooks...

Á while back I discovered you can paint Leather Travelers Notebooks with acrylic paint, my all time favorite medium. Regular Acrylic paint will work, however special acrylics for leather are better and give a much nicer result.

Since then I have made quite a few Traveler's notebooks that were painted, among which are my painted lady and some nebula's. I tend to show some of the TN's I make in my facebook group, Lady Falcon Traveler's Notebooks and on my instagram, @LadyFalconTN, but somehow seem to forget to post them here...

So without further ado, here's my latest Weir Tree TN. It's an A6 Traveler's Notebook and it has one, larger/older , brother, or sister, in the world =)

These are hand painted and since the leather doesn't take kindly to pencil, I can't sketch it out before hand.

Very short Blogpost...

I'm going to try something new today....I'm going to write a short blogpost... That's right, very short...
However, It is a rather long video =)

It's a flip through of my Traveler's Notebook (s), both my personal planner and the TN I took with me on holiday to Italy with the Travelogue and the doodling booklets.
 I hope you enjoy

Have a lovely weekend,
xx Monique

IG: LadyFalconTN
Flickr: Traveler's Notebooks
Etsy: MorganLeFaesTrinkets

A little trip and a travelogue to log it

Last week I went on a little trip to Italy with my family. We had lots of fun and mad loads of pictures. Over the years I noticed somehow those pictures are taken only to be never looked at again, or if you do look at them, you can't remember what was going on, or even where it was.

So the past few years I've taken to making a travelogue from all my trips. Sometimes quite elaborate, but usually just a brief journaling page per day with what we did and a few pics to go with it. Sometimes I draw, sometimes I don't. I just go with the flow.

This year I made a new template for my travelogue and made it available in my Facebook group, Lady Falcon Traveler's Notebooks

It started out looking like this

and ended up looking like this =)

Not as chunky as some I did before, but lovely and messy, just the way I like it.

A6, Fieldnotes/Pocket or Passport booklet making tutorial

Just a quick post today, with a video tutorial I made about printing and making A6, Fieldnotes (Pocket), Passport sized booklets when you onlu have A4 sized paper.

I don't think this will work with letter sized paper, because the dimensions and proportions are not completely comparable to A4 paper. However, the templates for FN and PP booklets might work.

If you do get it to work, please let me know =)

I also have a few pictures of the little passport I made.

Announcing the winner.. and a painted passport TN

This will be a very short blogpost, with just the video announcing the winner of the giveaway from the previous blogpost Traveler's Notebook.

So a short blogpost and a short video, that would be a first right? =)
Maybe even a bit too short...

How about a little eye candy then, my newest addition to my Traveler's Notebook family. Meet my super cute wallet passport Traveler's Notebook.

When I started I didn't know if it was going to work...

CLOSED My very first Pyrography Traveler's Notebook and a giveaway

At the beginning of last year I saw some beautiful Traveler's Notebook that were made with a technique called leather burning, pyrography. Inspired by this I set out to gather all the materials needed to give this a shot. Made a trial piece in leather and then somehow never got any further.

I guess I was just scared to ruin it and didn't trust myself enough to just go and do it. Well last week I gathered all the courage I could muster and went for it. Fail or no fail, I was going to make a Traveler's Notebook with pyrography.

And I did =)

Now I'm definitely not an expert at this technique, but I had fun doing it and I think it turned out rather nice. =)

The making of a leather "Journey" Travelers's Notebook...

And the mess it creates.

A while back I got a request for an A5 Traveler's Notebook by a lovely lady. Who made the mistake of giving me free reign in making it. Luckily she loves to create art as well. With that in mind and the fact that she planned on using it as an art journal I figured I could play a little.

I first tested the idea on a Traveler's Notebook I felt I ruined with some wrong stamping... I couldn't make it worse, right.

It turned out great, better even then expected.... and it left my whole Kitchen counter looking like a disaster area. I don't have a special art room and since I, obviously, was to enthusiastic and eager to try it, I didn't take any precautions. Which I should have, because I sprayed the leather dye... and I have sprayed inks before, so I should have known.

I did take some pictures while making this, so I'll try and explain what I did, should you want to try this at home.

Please remember the leather dyes I use (and are suitable to do this) are permanent inks. It will create a mess, so please protect the surroundings of your project... thoroughly!

My daily Traveler's Notebook, planner and common place book / journal

Today I finally made a video flip through of my daily Traveler's Notebook. I think a new video was long overdue, specialy now that I'm approaching 1000 subscribers on YouTube....

Which also means there's a giveaway coming. =)

First for the 1000 subscriber mark and secondly to celebrate the fact that I've now been making Traveler's Notebook for over a year and still loving them. Finding new ways to use them and trying out new techniques, like with my new "Journey" TN.

NaNoWriMo, how about that book cover...

With me essentialy being a discovery writer, also described as "seat of my pants" writer (in short, a pantser), or a gardener (as opposed to, respectively, an outliner, a planner, or an architect), I'm not entirely sure how I should prepare for the upcoming month.

As I told you last time, I made an inspirational booklet and downloaded Scrivener. Since then I also adapted the highschool workbook for the young writers into a Traveler's Notebook format, so my daughter could take it with her in her TN. That took some time, but was fun to do. They are nice to read and use even if you're not in high school. I made it available in my dropbox folder (you can find the link to the dropbox on my Midori TN free inserts page).

I played a little with Scrivener and, to be honest, I am impressed, so I'm keeping it. Watched some video's about outlining and prepping for NaNoWriMo (for instance Kaytastic's channel for the writing point of view and Ellen Brock's channel for the editor's point of view) and tried to implement some outlining by making chapters and character sheets in Scrivener (some great ones for Scrivener you can find here on Caroline Norrington's site). After which I came to a full stop.