Recycle Wednesday

I FINALLY have a post for Recycle Wednesday. It's not what I've had in my mind initially but it definitely fits.

I have a passion for Altered Art. I love taking something and repurposing it. And one of my favorite things to repurpose is a book. As a writer, I value the 'book in my hands', 'turn the pages', kind of thing. However, I am also wise enough to understand that as technology continues to advance, a lot more books are going to wind up in landfills. Sad, but true. I have 3 or 4 different 'Altered Books' in progress. Little by little I'll get them finished. In the coming weeks, as my creative time is shared with my granddaughter, I'll be posting some of my past completed projects.

Over the past couple of months, I've been working on a Stationary Swap over at SCS. My SCS friend, Susan always comes up with the neatest swaps! Being a hostess has a bonus! We work them as a 3 + 1... meaning everyone who signs up makes a total of 4. 3 will be swapped out amongst the other participants and 1 is for the hostess. She gets the goodies without having to create. Trust me, she has enough of a job coordinating the swap. She EARNS the goodies she receives in return.

Initially I wanted to use a binder system from Univenture. One of their products is THIS cute little binder. My plan was to make 'pocket pages' to fit the confines of the binder, and be able to hold the components required for the swap:

* at least 3 cards with envelopes

* coordinated pen or pencil

* place for postage stamps

* coordinating cover

* And we HAD to including stamping in some way.

Anything else we wanted to add, such as a notebook/ address book/ notepads/ stickers, etc were optional.

So I ordered my binders from Univenture and was all excited about my coming project when...

they were back ordered until the end of April! The swap was due to be in Susan's hands by March 1st. Okay... new plan.

The following weekend I was in the city and spent a lazy afternoon at Barnes n Noble perusing the mixed media art books when I came across an altered hardback book with pockets. BINGO!

Because I had to make four of these, I picked up 8 books (always nice to have extras on hand, right?) from my local library sales room for 25 cents each. They were each approximately 6" X 8.5". I plan to write a tutorial on this soon so I can't show the step by step, just the end results. But I will give you a brief overview of what I did. Here is a picture of the three different covers.

I used SU Sage Shadow to complement the soft florals in the first one, Cherry Cobbler in the 2nd one and Almost Amethyst in the 3rd one. I made two of the second design as I had purchased the most of that print. I must have really liked it.

After determining the placement of the items I needed to include and how much space would be needed between the pages, I cut out the excess book pages. They'll be great for punched flowers and other mixed media projects in the future.

While in the city, I made a lucky stop at JoAnns Fabrics where they had all their 12x12 paper on sale. I was able to coordinate the papers for all 4 albums at a reasonable price and pair them with papers in my stash. Here's how my pages came out:

Front pocket for Pen and Stamps 2nd pocket for Mini-notebook

I used this pocket for the 4 cards and this one to hold the envelopes.

I did 4 cards and lined the envelopes to coordinate with each album's color scheme. I also covered a mini-composition book to match the cover of the stationary keeper.

This particular set was done using SU Cherry Cobbler as the coordinating cardstock to The Paper Studios Mirabella Floral DP I purchased at JoAnns. The spine cover is Tan Leather by Paper Pizzazz.

My tip for this week... never judge a book by it's cover. It truly is what's inside that counts!

Creative Blessings!