Hi, Friends! Sarah here from SHEdesignsKC over on Instagram and the Archer & Olive Ambassador team. Today I want to share some roadtrip/travel spread ideas to incorporate into your bullet journal. Bullet journals and planners may be most used to organize time, dates, events, tasks, etc., but I like to incorporate fun and memories into mine as well and spreads specifically created for a trip can be a great way to do that. If you have travel plans coming up, I hope you’ll find some ideas here that you may want to use, to not only entertain you, but to help you remember what you did along the journey.

SUPPLIES USED

The supplies I’m using to set up the following spreads are:

• Archer & Olive notebook
• Archer & Olive Calliograph pens
• Archer & Olive fine liner
• Archer & Olive dot grid stencil
• Pencil and eraser

If you’re shopping for any of these items from A&O, be sure to use my affiliate code, SHEDESIGNSKC10 to save 10% on your purchase! Now let’s get into some fun spreads!

ROADTRIP BINGO SPREAD

This one is such a classic! Did you ever have one of those travel bingo games that had a little transparent slider window you could pull across when you spotted a bingo item? I was crazy about mine! The great thing about making your own bingo game is that you can customize it based on where your travels will take you. If you’re going to be driving through the country roads, add lots of farm animals and tractors. Headed to the beach? Maybe you want to look for palm trees and pool floaties. To set up this spread, decide how big you want your bingo board to be and what size you want each square to be. For my A5 journal, I created a 5 by 5 bingo board with each space being 5 by 5 dot grid spaces. I started with pencil to make sure I had my board spaced properly on the page. Draw in your bingo board with a ruler, or freehand it! When you’re ready to fill in the spaces, you can make it really jazzy with some little doodles of each item, or you can simply write in each bingo item in the squares. When you’re ready to play, you can mark off each item you find with a pen or marker. Another great option is to use transparent sticky notes to cover each bingo square. I had these small circular ones that were perfect! This makes your bingo game reusable as well! Woohoo! You’re ready to bingo!

Save yourself a little bit of setup time with this blank bingo board template! This is available as a free printable. Print, trim, and stick it right into your notebook!

LICENSE PLATE GAME

I always love playing the license plate game when I travel! When the driving seems endless, trying to find all the states’ license plates is a fun way to pass the time! There are a couple of ways to set this spread up. If you prefer a more structured look, you can draw out each of your rectangles the same size and set them up in equal rows/columns. For a more playful look, just scatter hand drawn rectangles around the page(s). A little bit of overlapping can add some visual interest too! Both looks are great, so choose the one you like best! I chose to do the more playful look, because that’s more my vibe, but it’s also a bit more work (also my vibe?). I used my Archer & Olive dot grid stencil to help me with the layout. I didn’t have the exact size of rectangle I wanted for the final product, so I just did a loose trace with my stencil on three sides of one of the rectangles leaving the bottom of each rectangle open. This gave me a really good idea of placement. I counted out 50 plates so I could be sure to fit everything before I went in with pen. Since I did my sketch lightly and in pencil, I was able to use those lines to guide my hand drawn and maybe slightly wonky rectangles with my A&O Calliograph. I found an alphabetized list of the 50 states and filled in the names on each license plate. I know too well that when I try to list all 50 states myself, I miss around 5. And even with this list to help me, I finished and realized I had 4 empty plates because I had somehow skipped some states as I was going. Haha! Maybe if I play this game enough times, I’ll see some improvement in my state recollection one day. Once you’re on the road and ready to play the game, you can mark off the license plates with a pen/marker, or the transparent sticky notes I mentioned previously! 

TRIP MEMORIES SPREAD

A trip memories spread is one of my favorites for travel spreads in my journal. This is a spot to highlight special things about your trip. I like doing this because when I travel for a couple of days, all the restaurants, events, sights, etc. seem to get all jumbled up in my mind. There are all kinds of things you could include in a spread like this, so it’s very customizable. You can keep it as a daily log, including things like the date, the day of the trip (example, “Day 2”), restaurants visited, sights, activities, travel summary (where I traveled to and from, hours traveled, miles, etc.) You can also set this up as a trip overview like I did in my spread. I used a header to name the trip, and then drew in some blank frames I can fill in at a later date with a doodle or a printed photo. I didn’t add much more, as I’ll decide afterwards what I want to highlight about my trip. Maybe the first frame will be a family pic at a special location and I’ll write a little note about that below. The second frame could be a doodle of my favorite meal I ate on the trip. (Have I mentioned before that I love to eat and feel the best meals need to be documented?) Also, I love the idea of doing some photos and some doodles on this spread for a playful look. For the third frame, I might do a picture from some activity we did on our trip with a fun caption written in. Lastly, I could fill in the final frame with a scenic photo. There are a lot of options and I can choose what stands out most to me for how I complete this spread. Leaving a bit of blank space on my spread also allows me to stick in any little keepsake paper item I may want to put here, like a ticket stub, wristband, etc. I would also be sure to find a space to include details about the trip, like the dates, short summary of daily activities, who was on the trip, and things of that nature. What a perfect way to preserve the memories of a trip with just a few special highlights! This is much less daunting to me than full on scrapbooking. What about you?

Thanks so much for joining me today and I hope you’ve found a spread you’d like to add in your journal for your next traveling adventure! See them all here:

If you’d like some thoughts on what journaling supplies to bring along on your trip, check out this great blog post on the topic! Let me know which of these spreads was your favorite! Be sure to tag me on Instagram @SHEdesignsKC and Archer & Olive if you create one of these spreads! We’d love to admire your handiwork! Also, use #aoshare so the community can see what you make! Talk to y’all soon!