Keeping Crafty Busy

I've been busy crafting, keeping busy any way that I can to kill the time until the hubby comes home in a few weeks from his 6 month deployment.  We've all miraculously survived intact even though my munchkins have had a few close calls, mostly due to their own evil behavior.  Here are two projects I created this last week. 

The top blue one, is an album made from cereal boxes, glue stick, cardstock and some brown linen paper.  It's just a base, I have yet to embellish or add pictures but I will get around to it. 

The second book is a journal I made out of yes, what else, cereal boxes, glue stick, card stock, scrapbook paper, linen paper, thread and needle.  Made completely from scratch, hand stitched by me.  This journal is the smaller of the two that I made.  The larger one was made as a gift and I mailed it out and forgot to photograph it, not that my photography is all that great but you may have wanted to see a visual of them side by side.  Hindsight is awesome. 

It has nine signatures made from three sheets that make six pages when folded in half for a total of 54 pages.  The pages were cut at 5x12 and folded in half.  This is actually the second and smaller one I made.  I made two journals from 30 sheets of 12x12, a cereal box, thread and two small sheets of linen paper plus glue stick.

 You can see here on my album blank that the papers all coordinate and that I made sure to make the hinges allow for a pretty thick embellishment if I so choose to use say a 3d flower.  The hinge will expand and the spine will accommodate it all up to a certain thickness.

 My SinL actually gave me the papers for X-Mas. 

 Blank, basic pages waiting for pictures and embellishments.

 My journal.  These are surprising easy, fun and addictive to make and considering the scrapbook papers used and the variety, pretty cheap as well.  I got a huge stack of something like 300 plus papers from Sams for really cheap and have just barely a year later run out.  The paper was labeled as cardstock but it was way lighter than what I think of as cardstock and did not work well in my cutting machine but was awesome for all sorts of other projects I've done this year.

 Inside my journal.  Great little size at 6 1/2x5 1/2.  Small enough to put in my handbag and large enough with enough pages to really get some use out of.

Lots of neat double sided papers in various colors and patterns.  One side is a solid color while the other is patterned.  Fun!

I will definitely be making more of these in the future.  I just need to get some more paper first.  :)

More Cereal Box Recycling

Okay...I saved up quite a few cereal boxes because my kid's preschool asked for them and when I asked if they would like them, was told they didn't need them anymore.  Well, I am a lazy recycler....sorry....but true.  I do not have a designated bin but have a certain day to recycle on...however if my can has trash, which is almost always does, the recycling piles up in the garage.  So in an attempt to be more earth friendly and not just give into the urge to chuck all of the cardboard cereal boxes in with the rest of the rubbish I have been turning them into albums and tags in earnest.

Here is the beginning of one such album, saving and reusing not only two cereal boxes but some hard covers to some empty notebooks as well. 

 I choose to recycle them into my crafting as the kids use up the guts of the notebooks.

 Yes, purple covers like the ones pictured did in fact become the covers for my album in progress.  The pictured ones are actually a second set I have yet to use.

Covered with DCVW Taj Mahal paper and some Colorbok (pronounced ColorBook).

Our favorite cereal.

 You can see in the next picture (slighty fuzzy one) that the album can expand a little. 

Sorry, this picture, I took so many times and it just refused to focus.  My only real excuse it it's late and I am too tired to really care.

 I've just begun to cover the inner cereal box pages.  This album will be pretty clean, not a lot of bling.  I really am not a huge bling person, that and my supplies are pretty low.

It has six pages, only counting the ones not attached to the covers.  It is a basic album construction.  with and extra quarter inch built in for expansion due to pictures, tags or whatever that will bulk up the album a bit.

I plan on using only supplies I have on hand.  So my cardstock will be from the DCVW Retro pack, DCVW Taj Mahal pack and from some solid Colorbok cardstock and whatever is in my scrap bin. 

I buy most of my stuff on sale or when it hits Big Lots, TJ Maxx or Ross but my local Big Lots has drastically scaled down the scrapbooking/crafting supplies and I haven't felt like driving out of town to the other places. 

I am probably more creative with my limited stash anyway as I am forced to be. 

Happy crafting everyone....and I will post an update when I finish my album.

Cereal Box Album

I've been busy trying not to lose my mind and so haven't done too much crafting of any kind.  I have managed to finish an album though.  Here is a quick gander at it.  I won't bore you with a page by page and every single pull out mini book but you get the idea.

The cover is made from a cereal box cut down to size and covered with cardstock.  This is a really, really easy album to create when you are strapped for time, supplies and creativity.  It really doesn't take too much of any of the afforementioned things.  One piece of 12x12 creates two pocket pages.  I chose this album style because it is so quick and easy to make, I am in a creative slump, short on supplies and time and because I wanted the o-rings to stick out on the outside of the spine in order to dangle stuff from them.

That's the album folks.