Using Traveler’s Dot Grid Notebook For My Food Adventure!
Hello! I am Connie from @pepperconarts on Instagram. I am very exciting to share with you here, how I am going to use my Archer & Olive Traveler’s Morning Sun Dot Grid notebook this year. As some of you might know, I am an avid user of the travelers size notebook, mainly using it when I am traveling and journaling. Like many, I love traveling to new places, exploring new things, meeting new people, immersing myself into new cultures. With the current situation and many things still on hold this year, traveling around the world seems to be too much of a distant dream (especially for me - Australia has super tight restrictions for travelling …). So, I decided to continue my travel in an alternative way - through cafés, restaurants and food!
To be very honest, I am not a foodie, in fact, when it comes to food, I am on the conservative side. But since I can’t travel this year, trying new food/cafés/restaurants at least once a month will be my new goal! I am planning to document my journey through my food adventure in this Traveler’s Dot Grid Notebook.
Here are some of the things I might be journaling in this notebook:
- Exploring new cafés/restaurants and review their star dishes.
- Researching a variety of the same type of food ie. Croissants in my city and review them.
- Reviewing or comparing new types of snacks or packaged food in the market.
- Trying different cuisines and researching the history/culture of the dishes.
- Finding recipes of my favourite dishes.
The size and format of this notebook is just perfect for reviewing or journaling. It’s not too large which allows you to write down your thoughts and ideas more freely.
Illustrating with Acrylograph pens
As always, I would like to document my journey with illustrations and lots of fun decorations. Here is an example I created on my visit to Calia in Melbourne. I included an illustration of the venue along with a few of my favourite dishes from them.
- Draw the outline with a pencil, try to keep the lines and shapes well defined and clear.
- Use the pens like paint brushes, don’t be afraid to make mistakes, you can always go over it after.
- Be bolder with your colour choice, sometimes a simple white could contain yellow, blue, purple and pink, see my boba cake illustration as an example.
- Add white highlights and contrast to define your subject. For example, in my fries illustration, I added a dark outline at the rim of the bowl as well as white highlights in sections to further define the shape.
- You can create tone with 2 colours using the blending pen provided in the set or you can just keep switching the 2 pens. I found the latter worked better. Just make sure you clean the tips afterwards!
For this spread, I used the Acrylograph pens Primary Selection , Jewel Selection, Warm Fall Collection and Cool Fall Collection in 0.7mm nibs.
Decorating with stamps and washi!
Apart from illustrations, I also like to use washi and stamps to decorate my page. If you read Masha’s blog post from the previous week, you can see there are a million things you can do with washi, so I won’t go on about them forever here. I mainly use washi for:
- highlighting key points
- Sectioning out my spread
- And for pure decorative purposes :)
For this spread I used the thin washi from The Future is Bright Washi Tape to section off the page, which allowed me to dedicate specific space for different subtopics. I also cut small dots out of one of the wider tapes to add “bokehs” around the spread. These additions help to lead your eyes to the key points plus they make the page very pretty
I have a vast stamp collection. The stamps I used in this spread are the clear stamps from Sakuralala and BGM. I like to use stamps that are relevant to the topic in focus. In my opinion, they add a lot of fun to the page.
So, that’s it from me for now. I hope you enjoyed reading about my process of food-adventure journaling today. I always find the size of a Traveler’s notebook very refreshing as it allows me to think and approach things in new ways - perfect for my food adventure this year! I am actually itching to do more pages right now. Hopefully I will be able to share with you more spreads from this journal throughout the year!
X Connie
If you would like to follow my creative journey, you can follow me on IG, my handle name is @pepperconarts
If you are interested in any of these products I mentioned above, here is the link and don’t forget to use my code PEPPERCONARTS10 to receive 10% off at checkout.