I am sorry for disappearing for the past two days. I was busy ripping out the smudged photographs from my 2011 Smash Folio. I am finally done and have replaced all 130 pictures :). That is such a relief. The smudges on the pictures were really bothering me and despite telling myself again and again that the project was supposed to capture memories and did not have to be perfect, the slight smudges still bothered me and there was no way out but to replace them. So replace them I did. Now I am free to move on to my Upcycled smash folio for next year.

How do you make an Upcycled smash folio? First you identify what you love about the current smash books and set out to mimic that look.

Well, what I really love about the smash books is that the pages are all different and yet seem to come together because of an overall theme and colour palette. I also love the few unexpected pages, with big bold typography or a cute quote. That is the look I want to mimic in my upcycled smash folio and actually that is quite easy to do.

All of us receive catalogues and mailers that are very beautifully designed. Paper Source for one, has gorgeous mailers, catalogues and shopping bags. Starbucks also has some interesting ones over the holidays. There are countless other stores that will have fun ones too! I used catalogues and mailers to cut out some pages like the ones shown below.

I also took out all my art experiments gone bad 🙂 and finally have a chance to use them. Some prints that were made during a print making class will find their way into my upcycled smash and will make awesome textured backgrounds.

I love to take photographs and get a lot of my work printed. Sometimes I end up framing the prints and other times they just make their way into my craft stash. Some of these photographs will make really cool pages for the book. I especially like the print shown below for use in my Smash Folio.

Wedding invites or fun shaped cards also make cool inserts. One can always add a layer of gesso or make a collage and use them as smaller pages or pockets or inserts to add visual interest to the book. What I love about making my own Smash book is that I am able to incorporate a lot of different paper with different colours and textures. I can also choose to add pockets and customize the folio to my needs.

I also have some papers in my scrapbooking stash that I am going to use as well as some of the pages I tore out from my actual Smash book.

Now that we have looked at some sources of paper, why don’t you dig into your stash and find some paper that you can upcycle. Tomorrow we will talk about sizes and then we will move on to discuss the cover for our smash book.