My Travel Art & Writing Kit

What I Wanted To Bring On Holiday Vs. What I Brought

I’m going on two holidays soon and thought I’d share some of the things I’m thinking of bringing with me.

I have split them into art supplies and writing supplies and plan on doing a whole bunch of writing whilst I’m away with my biggest project being, editing the first draft of my novel.

What I wanted to bring:

I picked up a few new sketchbooks of various sizes from TKMaxx after I saw how one one of my favourite sketchbook brands was at a really good price and in a whole array of colours. I had seen it there last year but didn’t pick it up which I regretted deeply. I told myself that if they were still there and at that price, then I would pick one up. I only ended up getting one in gold (although there was a beautiful yellow one but I couldn’t justify it because I had found a gorgeous A5 green). I got an A5 green sketchbook because I tend to use that size and style for my art journals. (I already have finished my first one so I wanted to start a second.)

I have my art roll which contains every pencil shade, colouring pencils and smudgers (I know that’s not what they’re called but I’ve been calling them that since I was a kid).

I’m not sure how much drawing I will do, but it doesn’t hurt to have something that would encourage the practice.

I also have this cute travel sized version of my larger Carandache water-soluble pencils that contain the main colours people tend to use. This is always perfect to colour and paint with.

What I actually brought:

Well, I enjoy packing light when I go away; only bringing a carry on and small tote with my essentials and because I wasn’t travelling with my artist friends, I left pretty much everything art related bar the mini blue and white sketchbook that I got from Urban Outfitters as well as my Kaweco Sport fountain pen - which currently has purple ink inside (fun fact). I love the look of drawing in fountain pen and want to improve. It’s also the perfect 2-in-1 really, seeing as this is the main pen that I write with too.

This leads me nicely on to the writing tools that I brought and yes, it’s minimalist by design.

I only packed my Filofax.

Before setting off, I’m making sure to optimise my Filofax to be the one stop all-in-one place for all my writing and journaling needs.

I used to split myself in between so many journals and at first it was perfect, but just as life isn’t stagnant and changes, the way I wanted to use my journals changed also.

I no longer enjoy writing in my Hobonichi Weeks dupe. There were so many things I was making myself do that just seemed robotic and no longer useful for me. There were also areas in my Filofax that were a waste of pages and space.

I know I want to do a lot more in my Filofax, but I had told myself that I would wait until next year when I’ve finished my Hobonichi. After a few more weeks of missed journal entries I asked, why next year? Why not now? So out came my scissors and out came the pages of my Weeks journal.

I hole punched the pages I would utilise and began creating new inserts for my Filofax which I will give a brief overview now. I will save a more in-depth description when I share my ‘All My Journals’ post. This is the ‘holiday prep’ overview:

• I inserted a to do list and a Hobonichi weeks page in between each page of my 2026 week-to-view.

• Instead of writing events and tasks in the diary pages of my Filofax (which I had been doing before I decided to use it how I used my weeks) I now used that space to write a recap of my day each evening before bed. If my thought couldn’t quite fit in the allowed space, then I could continue my entry on the Hobonichi insert so, for example: let’s say I’m writing an entry on Wednesday. I’m in the middle of a sentence but have run out of space on the 2026 week-to-view section, then I will move over to the Hobonichi insert, go to the corresponding day and continue my sentence.

• I’ve dedicated some note pages in the last section of my Filofax for notes and other thoughts I would like to expand on.

• I filled up my little pouch with more stickers and added more blank dotted pages for both my commonplace section and Substack sections so I can write as much as I’d like.

• I removed pages that I either didn’t use or knew I wouldn’t use to make my Filofax less bulky as I was already bringing a whole ton of books with me.

Now I have an all-in-one place for the important things and they’re easily transportable. I’m sure next holiday I will be able to bring some more exciting things as my next trip is going to have some art opportunities which I’m looking forward to!

What are a few of your go to things for a trip?

Do you try to be a minimalist or go all out?

✨ Nadine