Need to Learn Your ABCs?? It's In The Bag!

I made a New Years Resolution to blog more.  Since this is a craft blog, that means crafting more too.  Pretty excited that I actually have a second project done and it is only January 5th!  Go, me!!
I had a hankering to make a paper bag album.  I love the crunchy noise they make.  But what to make it for or use it for or put in it???  I was doing some Kindergarten prep with Jake and decided an alphabet book would be an awesome project.  Josh could use it too.  And they would both enjoy the crunchy noise it makes when you turn the pages.
So here it is....and ABC Book.
First I folded the bags in half and creased the fold with a bone knife.  I opted to not stack them inside each other as I need to use several to fit the whole alphabet.  I didn't want that waterfall like edge from using too many.

To cover the pages I used several different sheets from various October Afternoon Collections....Fly a Kite, Seaside, Daydream, 5 & Dime, Sidewalks, Schoolhouse and a shape sticker sheet from the Report Card Collection.

lots of crunchy goodness

wrong haircolor but so reminds me of my boys when they read

I have three boys.  They are a serious demolition crew...so I went with a worn and torn look.  Each 5 x 5 sheet I cut was distressed on the edges and then crumpled up and re-flattened.  Fun.
For the letters I used some Core'dinations cardstock and my Silhouette.  I sanded the letters and adhered them in the book.

oh..Lean Cuisine is on sale and I have coupons!

I had bigger visions for this album...pull out tags since the bag has a premade pocket...but then realized a 2 and 5 year old would be using it and kept it simple.  Pretty excited with the outcome.  It looks really cool.
Used my Cinch to punch holes in it but decided on two binder rings to hold it all together.

I foresee more of these albums being made.  Maybe a number one.

This was a true Scrap-ements projects.  Fifteen minutes here, fifteen minutes there over the course of two days.
Thanks for looking!

Monday Make It Challenge

I am challenging my scrappy friends on facebook and all my blog followers to a Monday Make It Challenge.

Make a notebook.  Alter an existing one....make one from scratch...whatever gets you motivated.

Here is mine with a quickie how to.  Pretty happy with the finished product.

Started with a pre-binded chunk of plain paper (had this in my "keep it and maybe I'll use it" pile), a few sheets of Quite Contrary Paper from MME (love this paper as I have a bit of an owl obsession happening), really nice fabric (donated to me by my awesome friend Sharon M.), a 12 x 12 piece of black chipboard and some fabric interfacing for the Silhouette.

supplies...minus the various adhesives I used

First I did some measuring so see how much I would need to cut off so that the paper would fit nicely in the about to be chipboard cover.

measure twice, cut once or eyeball it and cross your fingers

It turned out to be the perfect width, so all I had to do was cut off some length and score it in the middle to create a spine.

be careful not to cut all the the way thru

 Then I covered the inside (minus the spine) and the outside (minus the spine).

hoot

love, love this paper almost hated to cut it

Now for the spine...I ironed the fabric to the Silhouette interfacing and stuck it on a cutting mat.  Then I took FOREVER picking just the right shape for the front side...downloaded a bunch of non-relevant shapes...organized the newly added shapes....  After all that I ended up with a pretty basic shape for the spine.  I am so good at getting side tracked.

stuff is awesome

should have ironed that crease....

12 hours later.......

awesome!

Adhering it to the spine was a fun challenge.  I had used up all my double-sided-super-sticky-adhesive.  So with a mixture of glue dots and Diamond glaze....I got that thing to stick!
All that was left was embellishing and sticking the bunch of paper on the inside (another challenge that involved a lot of different mediums).

binder clip to hold it shut...wish it was brown

inside pocket for....stuff

finished notebook!

cute little bookmark I made with leftover fabric, chipboard and an owl sticker.

I'm a Guest Designer!!!

For the whole month of September come and check me out every Tuesday over on the MemoryWorks Blog.

I am super excited about this!!! I best get to scrapping! Next week is a tour of my scrap space....yikes! I have some cleaning and organizing to do. Please stop by the MW blog and say hi!! If you have never heard of Memory-Works...let me tell you..it is a fantastic company...see what they are all about here.