Lake Life: One Story
The Lake Life Pocket life kit was created to document all the different ways we experience time by the water. From kayaking, canoeing, paddle boarding, fishing, and swimming to quiet walks along the shore, watching birds, or simply sitting by the lake and taking in the view, the kit leaves room for both active adventures and slower, more contemplative moments. The color palette creates a calm, natural feel that works beautifully with photographs of water, vegetation, wildlife, and outdoor activities.
For this project, I decided to take a slightly different approach and use the kit to create a small travel-documentary about one of the places we visited during a trip to Italy. Instead of focusing on one particular activity, I wanted to document the place itself – where it is, what makes it interesting, and what we experienced during our short stay there.
Discover — find your place
When documenting a place you visit during a trip, I like to start with the basics: where is it, and how did you get there? A map is a simple but very useful way to preserve this context. Years later, it can help you remember not only the name of the place, but also where it was located and how it fit into your journey. This is especially useful for places that were not necessarily your main destination. Our stop at Lake Kochelsee was one of those spontaneous travel moments. We stayed overnight in Schlehdorf on our way to Italy, and the lake became a small part of a much bigger journey. Adding a map and a few lines about how we ended up there gives this short stop its proper place in the story of our trip. A map can also tell more than a paragraph of text. It shows the surrounding area, nearby towns, and the relationship between different locations at a glance. If you are documenting a longer trip, you can even mark your route or indicate where the place fits into the overall journey.
Design tip
A map is already a visually informative element, so it doesn’t need much decoration around it. Give it enough breathing room and let it remain the focal point of the page. A few carefully chosen accents are usually enough to make the page feel complete without competing with the map itself.
Learn – collect the facts
Once I know where a place is, I like to find out a little more about it. For this page, I used the Lake Details card from the kit to collect some of the basic information about Lake Kochelsee – its type, surface area, depth, activities, and a few interesting facts. Including this kind of information turns a simple photo page into something more like a small personal travel document. I especially enjoy keeping factual information alongside my photographs because it gives me a different way to remember a place. A photograph can bring back the atmosphere, while a few carefully chosen facts can remind me what made the location special in the first place. Together, they create a much richer record of the place. You don’t need to turn your scrapbook page into an encyclopedia, though. I prefer choosing just a handful of facts that genuinely interest me, teach me something new, or help explain what makes the place unique. A surprising fact, an unusual geographical detail, or a piece of information connected to the activities you can enjoy there can be enough.
Design tip
When adding factual information to a scrapbook page, think of it as part of the storytelling rather than as a separate information sheet. Choose details that complement your photographs and your personal experience of the place. A small, well-curated collection of facts will usually be much more engaging – and much easier to read – than trying to include everything you can find.
Experience – make it personal
After documenting where the place is and learning a little about it, I like to bring the story back to my own experience. This is where photographs become especially important. For my third page, I included a few different moments from our evening at Lake Kochelsee: a photo of me by the lake, a swan, birch trees along the shore, and the fried zander I had for dinner at a local restaurant. None of these moments was a major event, and that is exactly the point. We simply spent some time walking along the shore, watching the birds, enjoying the scenery, and having dinner. But these small observations are what make the memory personal. Years from now, a photograph of a swan or a plate of fish may bring back the atmosphere of that evening much more vividly than a generic landscape photograph ever could. When documenting a place, I like to think beyond the obvious “beautiful view” photograph. Including different types of images – people, nature, details, and food – creates a much more complete picture of what it actually felt like to be there. Together, these small fragments can tell the story of an experience without requiring a long piece of journaling.
Design tip
Try combining photographs with different subjects and scales. A portrait can show your presence in the story, a nature photo can establish the atmosphere, while a small detail or a food photo can capture something uniquely connected to that particular visit. This variety gives the page more visual interest and makes your memory feel much more personal.
For me, travel scrapbooking is not only about preserving photographs of the places I visit. I also want to remember what I discovered there – where the place is, what makes it interesting, and what I experienced while I was there. Combining these three layers turns a simple collection of photos into a small personal travel document. The Lake Life kit works beautifully for this kind of storytelling because it gives you enough elements to document both the activities and the quieter details of life around the water. You can use it to record an adventure, a spontaneous stop during a road trip, or simply an evening spent walking along the shore. So the next time you visit a new place, try looking at it from three different perspectives: discover the place, learn something about it, and then make it personal. You may find that even a short stop along the way is worth much more than just a few photographs.
PRODUCTS I USED IN THIS TUTORIAL
