Short Trip Refills: When 32 Pages Is Exactly Enough (and When It Isn’t)
If you’ve ever packed a Traveler’s Notebook for a weekend and come home with twenty blank pages, the Short Trip refill sounds like the perfect fix. It’s 32 pages — half the page count of a standard insert. The official pitch is simple: use it up on a short trip, feel the satisfaction of finishing a notebook, and keep your setup lighter.
Here’s the catch: “lighter” and “easier to finish” are the same feature. Whether this refill works for you depends entirely on how you use your notebook.
What the official release actually promises
The Short Trip refill comes in Regular and Passport sizes, with three paper options: white MD PAPER, cream MD PAPER, and kraft. According to the announcement, the thinner profile does two things. First, you can actually finish it during a trip. Second, if you carry multiple inserts organized by purpose, the slimmer refills keep your TN from getting heavy. (Source: TRAVELER'S COMPANY official release)
They also suggest keeping a small glue stick on hand so you can stick shop cards, stamps, and receipts in as you go. By the end of the trip, you have one notebook holding all your travel memories. That’s a tidy pitch, and for a certain kind of trip, it’s accurate.
Where 32 pages falls apart
Thirty-two pages sounds like a lot — until you start pasting things in.
If you write a daily page and also stick down tickets, stamps, and ephemera, you can burn through a Short Trip refill in a few days. Not weeks. Days. Once you add adhesive and thick paper scraps, the usable page count drops fast and the binding gets tight. If you’re on a two-week trip, one refill probably isn’t enough. You’ll need two, which defeats the “lighter” argument.
Reddit users in r/Travelersnotebooks regularly mention how fast inserts fill up once you start pasting instead of just writing. I haven’t found a thread specifically complaining about the Short Trip, but the general pattern applies: thinner refill + heavy ephemera = a very short lifespan. (Source: r/Travelersnotebooks)
So who is this actually for? Someone who wants a dedicated insert for a single trip, writes lightly, and doesn’t mind swapping refills. It’s also genuinely useful for people who carry three or four inserts and need to shave weight.
Kraft and black paper: the Suatelier problem
The official post also shows off the Color Refills — kraft pink, kraft yellow, kraft turquoise, and black — with ideas like drawing a red mailbox on pink kraft or using white ink on the black insert. Those are good ideas. But there’s a practical detail the official release doesn’t mention: kraft paper isn’t pure white.
If you stick a Suatelier sticker sheet on kraft paper, the paper’s tint changes how the sticker looks. That white border around each design? On yellow or pink kraft, it shows up much more than it does on white MD paper. That’s not a dealbreaker — it can actually work in your favor if you’re going for a scrapbook look. But if you’re trying to match a Suatelier design exactly to what you saw on a product page, the kraft background will shift the overall color feel.
The black refill is a different story. White ink is essential. If you plan to use dark Suatelier designs on black paper, they’ll disappear. The official release recommends opaque white ink for a reason — and that’s a tool you’ll have to buy separately.
My take on the Short Trip
This isn’t a refill I’d recommend as your everyday insert. If you write daily and paste things in, the page count is too low — you’ll be buying refills constantly. But as a trip-specific insert — one Short Trip for one journey, pasted and written to the brim — it’s a solid concept.
It’s also a decent way to test a new paper type without committing to a full-size refill. Curious about kraft paper but don’t want to write 64 pages on it? The Short Trip is a lower-stakes trial.
Who should skip it
Skip the Short Trip if you keep a daily journal in your TN, paste a lot of ephemera, or want an insert that lasts weeks. You’ll be disappointed by how fast it fills up. Also skip it if you want a single insert for everything — this is designed to be one of several, not the only one.
If you’re planning a short trip and want a notebook that actually gets finished by the time you get home, it does exactly what it’s designed to do. Just don’t expect it to replace your daily setup — unless you like the ritual of switching refills.