Here I am again and I finally found some time to work on my Smash Book! The upcycled version looks pretty cool and I started work on the first page yesterday. I am going to talk about some upcycled embellishments over the weekend but I thought it would be cool to share what I did for my first upcycled smash book page with y’all!

Yesterday was an amazing day. I had lunch with a team at our company and also found the time to shop and get an awesome pair of shoes while waiting for our order to arrive 🙂 I had a lovely evening with friends and followed up on some very interesting projects at work. Got a few lucky breaks and made some breakthroughs and just generally felt blessed and happy. The feeling was something I wanted to document since I had been feeling pretty tired lately and a little overwhelmed with massive to-do lists both at home and work.

I thought that this would be the perfect way to start my upcycled smash book and so here is what my first page looks like!

I used some memorabilia from the places that I went to eat. I went for lunch to a restaurant and had the most amazing soup, steak and dessert. In the evening I had cheese fries and frozen yogurt! I tried blueberries for the first time in my life! Never thought I would like them but surprisingly I did 🙂

I added some stickers to highlight the happenings and special moments of the day. I found some awesome shoes and bought those and spent time organizing life at work and getting things done. The shoes were represented using some really cute stickers of shoes and sales. The paper bag from one of the eateries made a very cool pocket for a journaling card. I used the card to add some personal notes and journaling that will not be visible to everyone going through the book.

I used a black sharpie marker to add some basic information about the day.

Making this page was quite a smashing experience and I felt that adding things as the year progresses is a lot better than waiting for the year to end and then making a book. I did that for my 2011 smash book and it turned out to be quite a long project and got a little tiring in the end. I actually enjoyed my smashing session yesterday and since I had to make just one page I really enjoyed trying different things and adding new layers. Much better than having 40 pages to do all at once 🙂

Here are some more detailed shots of the page. I used some stickers, some memorabilia, some chipboard embellishments and a Sharpie marker. I like limiting my supplies. It forces me to play with what I have in a creative fashion and since this is an upcycled smash book, the goal is to keep things simple and green.