Cute little mini notebook- my latest distraction....

This is the latest of my distractions that has kept me from working on an album that I should be finishing up, but oh well, it was fun, and now I can give them away as gifts or such. I got the idea from a fun blog : http://scrap-ements.blogspot.com/ . They're very cute, small- I think I might play with trying to make them a little bit bigger, but that will have to wait until after I finish the much procrastinated on album.

Simply decorated plant pots

This is about as Picasso as I get : polka dots and polka dot flowers :). I used the little bottles of fabric paint that you can get very inexpensively and just made little flowers with them and polka dots on the terra cotta planters. I then put bedding plants in them and gave them as thank you gifts to our childcare workers at church. They are a lot of fun to make, quick, and very simple. I'm all for fun, fast, and cute.

Personalized Altered Notebooks

Here's some more altered notebooks that I made for specific people (using their initial) per a request from a friend for gifts at church. I made a little pocket on the inside cover with a "thank you" tag, since they were thank you gifts for the recipients. I'm actually having to make 4 more now for various reasons, - I'm using the same papers and ribbons to do those too. These come together pretty quickly. I use notebooks that I get at Michael's in their dollar section and find cute scrapbooking paper to cover them. I've found that Terrifically Tacky tape works best for me to hold the paper on really well (nothing like working really hard on something and having it start to fall apart because of inadequate adhesive....) I used my Cricut to make the letters.

Chipboard Car Mini Album (Baby boy themed)

I finally finished up this album that my best friend gave me- when I started it was just a plain chipboard album waiting to be decorated. I chose to decorate it in a baby boy theme for a gift. I've been at the point of being "almost" done for a while now. I still don't think it's as good as it COULD be, but I'm as done as I'm going to be. I'll show some of my favorite pages out of it. I used chipboard letters from one of the chipboard cubes you can find around in various stores. I'd gotten it on clearance and it was pastel colors and sayings that I wouldn't normally use, but I decided that I could use it by painting/covering up the original surfaces. It took me a while, but I'm definitely happier with the result. I used embroidery floss to make little ties around it and inside the buttons to add more dimension to them. I also used my handy dandy edge distresser to roughen up the mats a little bit, since it's for a boy. I also sanded and inked around the edges of the car shape. I made little journaling tags to slip in behind the pictures with a strip of paper that matched the page it was on. I'm glad to be done with it, it was definitely an awkward shape to decorate to where it would look balanced. Some how a picture ended up on there twice, and since I've already accidentally canceled what I was working on once already, I'm going to leave well enough alone and leave it on there rather than risk messing up and having to start all over again...

How to make a Coffee Sleeve Mini Book

How many of you have looked at a coffee sleeve and thought there might be something more that it could be used for than just keeping your fingers from being burned holding your yummy (and probably expensive) coffee?
Even if you haven't thought anything more than, "gee I'm glad my hands aren't getting burned", check out a fun project that you can do with them - and feel good about reusing something that would have otherwise become garbage : a coffee sleeve mini book. Now, those of you who know me aren't surprised that something like this would appeal to me to try, but believe it or not, the first time I saw an illustration of how to make one on YouTube, I was not impressed and didn't want to be bothered. It wasn't until I checked it out again recently that I figured I'd try to do more with it than the gal with her example.
So since we're celebrating Mother's Day this month, here's a suggestion that could make a good gift. You can put quotes about moms in it, write your own "memories", favorite things about your mom, or put pictures in- it's pretty small though which will make getting pictures in there challenging unless you can size them down a lot. I will show you the process of how I made mine- I'm still working on the decorating part, but I'll show you a picture of the original one I made with Scripture verses in it to encourage a friend in the hospital.
Here we go:
Get your coffee sleeve and cut the right side where it's perforated, then open it up.
Next determine what papers you want to use. For the inside I used a heavier weight of printed paper for my pages, but you could use solid cardstock and either glue patterned paper on it or decorate it otherwise, it's completely up to you. You will trace around the outline of the opened coffee sleeve a total of 4 times - one for the outside of the cover, one for the inside of the cover, and two for the inside pages.
I found that the paper fit the inside and outside of the cover if I cut it in half where the fold would be, I then glued it on. I used regular adhesive (a glue runner- glue stick would work sufficiently too) for the outside of the cover, and for the inside- since it's corrugated, I used Terrifically Tacky Tape - a super sticky tape, so that it would adhere well, since it's hard to get good surface coverage with the corrugated paper.
I made a little strip of paper the height of the book and folded it over the "binding"/fold of the mini book, scalloped/inked it, and glued it on to cover the slight area of cardboard paper that showed in the fold. I used the tacky tape for this because it holds better with the opening and the fold.
I then put all the pieces together as a book and punched holes at the fold/center with my Cropadile, but if you have regular hole punch that would get the job done also. I set eyelets in the middle of the front and back cover of the book so you can thread ribbon through it and tie it shut. I also scalloped the edges of the inside pages with my corner rounder and inked it because it added a little more "oomph" to the look. I tied ribbon through the holes in the center and trimmed off the edges nicely. It's now ready to decorate.

Altered Matchbox

This is another project that I found from Cafemom- actually, a swap- where you're partnered up with someone and you decorate one for each other and fill it with all those tiny scrapping goodies- buttons, eyelets, brads, metal clips, etc.- anything you can fit in there. These little matchboxes are about 2 1/4 inches (give or take), and oh so much fun to play around with. Now here's where the mini-album geek in me comes out... (no, this is not actually a mini album), wouldn't it be fun to get the bigger size matchbox, decorate that, and put a mini album inside? I think that would be a blast.... Note to self, go get one of those boxes of matches in the store! :)

Coffee Sleeve Mini Book

This is what I do when I'm putting off finishing up the things I NEED to be getting done: try something fun and not on the 'to do' list. I have a couple of baby mini albums (one is chipboard and one is an 8 x 8 standard album ) that I'm mostly and halfway done with, and for the moment, those are what sat at me forlornly while I played with this: a coffee sleeve mini book. I used a Starbuck's coffee sleeve- those little sleeves they offer so you don't burn your fingers holding your expensive but yummy coffees etc. I came upon this idea from a group on Cafemom, and a "how-to" was featured from YouTube. The challenge was given to come up with something more than the gal's basic version. On the YouTube version, she didn't cover the sleeve with paper, she just traced the outline of it and made an inside page- put a little picture on it , and a sticker on the cover, still showing the Starbuck's logo... I had seen this once before and again thought: You could do SO much more than that with it! On the first one I've done, I did Scripture verses because I'm giving it to my neighbor's mom in the hospital. I want to try some with coffee, chocolate, friendship type quotes too- I think that would be really fun. You could even do a mother quote book too. I only did 2 inside pages because it really doesn't fit well with more than that, and I did have to cut the inside and outside cover at the fold so it would look right when I glued it on. The little "binding" cover with the scallops was a thought to just cover the cardboard that showed still when it was closed, and to also give a little more support. Now that I look at it, I could have done more, but I'm satisfied for the first time I've done it. A couple of the pictures might show some smearing because I didn't Stickle the flourishes on the pages before I put the book together (bad choice- because it smeared against the adjoining page... ), I have since rectified that by re-printing out the verses for those pages and it looks considerably better. - Have I mentioned that I've determined that I'm an uptight scrapper?! :) Anyhow, thanks to Diane in Sassy Scrappin Sistahs in CM to give me a nudge to try this :)