Ways of reusing those ubiquitous picture envelopes

You know those envelopes that you get from wherever you get your pictures developed that tend to scatter all around your scrappy space?  Well, i hate throwing them away, but usually just do to maintain space in my scrappy area.  I've always used them to sort photos till they make it to my actual photo sorting system, which is this- 

I get a couple a year at costco and am gradually getting caught up sorting my decades of photos.  

However, being prone to procrastination as i am, i don't get the pictures in there immediately.  And i've always sorted them in envelopes by month.  Today i figured out i could ALSO make little folders out of them and sort within the month by event, for busier times of the year like this.  See?? i'm pretty excited about this.  

Someday I may possibly clean off my desk.  :) maybe. 

"December Days"

So, i've noticed that as women and particularly as scrappy women, we like to punish ourselves with concepts of taking a picture every single day of the year and scrapping it in an album, and then in November, doing a gratitude album, and then in December, doing a December Daily.... and on and on... and currently, i'm in a place, family-wise, in which i'd not be able to do that, even remotely, even if i WANTED to, which of course, i ABSOLUTELY would :)  But the process of adapting to life changes means adapting to things that are simply not possible in an unadapted state which brings me to my December Days album.

I subscribe to the Citrus Twist kit club which i'm sure i've mentioned before, and love it.  Trina has GREAT customer service, is attentive, and designs awesome, amazing, eclectic kits.  I'm on my 3rd and so far they've all come with an inker, at least one stamp, fibers, papers from several lines, exclusive stamps and embellishments, and more.  This month's kit arrived yesterday, and i'm getting started this morning working on it.  Now, my dilemma is that i really really prefer to use kit leftovers for minibooks, as it 1. uses up leftover and i'm not left cutting a 1" by 5" strip from a 12x12 paper! and also because the little leftover pieces are themselves inspiring and take much of the brainwork out of the process!  so i made the shell of the album and will be making the cover and the majority of the pages as the month goes on-  but i'm posting here in case anyone else is inspired by this idea, NOW before its too late.

What I used:

-i used the thin cardboard inserts that come with the kits each month- i used two, chopped them in half and then folded them in half to make 8 6x6 pages (front and back)

-in November, Trina sent kit subscribers a set of baggies and dealymabobs to make an album with, as a contest- i'm using those baggies and cardboard thingie for the other pages.

-2 binder rings

-3 hole punch

-Brown inker from the December kit.

-misc supplies and fibers and stamps and other stuff.

 So here's exactly what i did.

 Please excuse my desk mess- while i love my house neat and orderly, for some reason, i love my desk all scrappy and messy.  I write on my table, i doodle, i leave pictures laying around...  you might notice a red teardrop shaped BLOB where a certain husband who shall remain nameless felt compelled to take the lid off my Prima fall leaf colored inker and BLOB it on my desk, for no particular reason!   Moving on....

So, first, i took my 3 hole punch (in order that the holes would line up- versus a 1 hole punch guestimated) and punched the 4 cardboard sheets in approximately the same location.  it doesn't have to be exact, because the other pages will be all askew anyway, but i wanted to have the basic form be pretty basic and similarly aligned. 

here's what they all look like punched. 

then I proceeded to punch the envelopes and long cardboard shape, making them intentionally differently punched.  

Then I proceeded to liberally ink the entire inner and outer edges of each peice.  I was a bit afraid i was going to ream out my inker, but thankfully it was strong enough to hold up.  Be gentle though.  I was tempted to rush through it after doing a bunch of pages.  

To line up all the pages that were all differently punched, i opted to take the two rings, open them, and add each page, sticking it through the ring.  that worked a lot better than just trying to line them all up and THEN ring them.  

Ta-da! this is what the end result of the empty book looks like. 

And here's the first page, not counting the cover, which for that and future pages i'm waiting for December kit scraps to avail themselves. 

here's a close up of a tab and stamp i'm liking.  Not to mention my sweet little belly-bean.  

ENJOY!!!  I hope others who are intimidated by a December Daily might make a December Days album! if you do, please leave a link so i can go check it out!!! 

Scrap therapy

This is a layout from my Citrus Twist November kit that i made for Apron Strings sketch challenge, and its actually kind of funny, i had to do surgery on the black and white paper to get it the right shape and it was my last peice and i NEEDED it for the red/black/white with a burst of color scheme i wanted to create.  There's a backstory to this one.  So first, much of the design of this layout is actually in the picture itself.  i edited the picture 'meme style' to reflect an event that happened last week.

Here's a close up of the picture

 Ash is 3 and has autism. He goes to special ed preschool and rides the bus daily.  his bus driver snatched away his toys which are his comfort objects, and it was super traumatic for him.   It might not seem like a big deal, but to a lot of spectrum kids, Asher included, the world is an intimidating place.  His sensory system si all messed up- sounds are way louder than we hear them, touches are harder, lights are brighter.  That would be hard for me to take, let alone a practically brand new person.  Its a constant struggle to make sure his environment is as hospitable for him as possible.  And i'm commmitted to doing so- he deserves a chance.  we ended up buying him bath toys shaped like things he normally enjoys, airplanes and firetrucks, since they insisted on allowing only soft items in the bus.  This was a sort of scrap therapy for me, the event being probably close to as traumatic for me as for him.  It really clarified for me that we are in a battle, and i have to protect this helpless child and be on guard ALL the time. anyway, thanks for looking!