New Blog!

Hello everyone! I know I have been away again for a while but I was going through some bad medical problems and just got done with an operation. I should hopefully be able to get back to my crafting and blogging now.

I have been working on my new blog which is hosted on my own domain now 🙂 and will link to my website: http://www.alteredupcycling.com. I am so excited about this. If y’all would still like to follow me please goto: http://www.alteredrecycling.com and subscribe to my new blog. I will make all new posts on the new blog form now on.

I am really looking forward to seeing y’all there!

FREE Craft e-book

Hi y’all!

I am sorry to be missing for so long, but I was off for a much needed vacation. I went to Uzbekistan and had the most magical time there travelling the silk route. I will post about the trip shortly with lots and lots of pictures but for now…

Just wanted to let you know that my book about smash books and scrapbooking in an eco friendly way and on a budget is FREE today

Projects Galore – Make Upcycled Cards

As y’all know I have been working on a book and video series based on making cards from paint chips. I have made all the videos and also have the book ready to be released, hopefully this week. If you would like to know more about the book and its release please sign up at http://www.alteredupcycling.com or follow us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AlteredUpcycling

Here are some pictures that will give you an idea of the sort of cards we’ll be making 🙂

There are also lots and lots of videos on YouTube that y’all might be interested in checking out. Here is one of them:

The NEW Smash Books E-Book – Available on the Kindle

Finally I come back for another blog post. A lot has been going on in my life. Marriage, illness and work. I found some time to work on my craft projects and some books though and will have a lot for you over the summer.

For now I want to introduce my newest book! 🙂

 

The Ultimate Guide to Smash Books,Smashing and making your own Upcycled Smash Books!

The book is available for the Kindle and will be on iBooks, The Nook and Kobo Books soon.

Here is a little about the book!

 

So what exactly is a Smash Book?

Smash Books are pre-bound scrapbooks, but instead of plain pages, which can be hard and daunting to fill, they have patterned papers and different papers with sayings on them. The books are made from good quality card stock and can take a lot of memorabilia glued, taped or stapled to the pages.

The entire process of just adding pictures and memorabilia to the pages without bothering about the perfect layout is what is called ‘smashing.’ This makes these new smash books fun and easy to work with. The pages are beautifully coordinated and put together with an occasional ‘surprise’ page with a saying or picture that you would not expect. The books are coordinated with a lot of extras that you can buy as well, like pockets, stickers, and tabs.

We go over Smash Book basics as well as an Upcycled version of a Smash Book, how to make it using old mailers, magazine pages etc. and also finish it up with some upcycled embellishments using soda cans etc.

This is one book you don't want to miss if you like scrapbooking, smashing or altered books!

My Upcycled Scrapbox Desk :)

I love the scrapbox products. I have always been fascinated with doing a lot with little spaces. That is one of the reasons I love the Ikea stores. Can’t get over the fact that they can fit so much in so little space. It’s like they plan entire homes in the space I would normally think a single room with require.

I am sorry for being MIA recently but a lot has been happening. I got married for one 🙂 and very ill as well :(. It took me quite a while

Smash Books 101

I have been experimenting on how to make my own smash books and recently finished one that will chronicle all happenings 2012. I wrote a series of blog posts on my blog that y’all may have read recently.

Crafting a Green World was kind enough to have me over as a guest blogger and I did a Smash Books 101 blog post for them. For those of you who want all the information in one place head on over to their blog to see the entire post. 🙂

All my books!

I am so super excited! All my books are now available on the Kindle. You can download them through the links shown in the sidebar on the right. Oh! and Amazon Prime members can read the books for free!

All three books are based on upcycling techniques. Turn soda cans, plastic packaging, fabric scraps, old books and magazines into works of art. Everything from cards, frames, scrapbook layouts, bags, ornaments and table decor!

The Ultimate Guide to Upcycling can also be downloaded for free if you sign up for my blog. 🙂

 

How to make a Smash Book the Upcycled way Part 3

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

My Book of Inspiration

We all have lists of projects that we want to do. Some we find in magazines, others come to us in dreams, many more flood from blogs that we follow or blogs that we love 🙂 I have an ever growing list of projects I want to make but I find that most of the times I forget about the ideas because they are in many different places, in word files, on sticky notes, in sketchbooks, all over the place and when creativity strikes I don’t want to dig for ideas, I just want to create, altered books, artist trading cards, smash books, upcycled treasures…

Therefore I have resolved to make a book of inspiration. Have you noticed that since the new year has started I have been all about making scrapbooks, organizing memories and generally getting my crafting life in order? 🙂 I love the new me, hope it lasts… My book of inspiration will have clippings from magazines, sketches of ideas that I dream up and printed pictures of anything that is found on the WWW. Finally I will have all my ideas in one place complete with notes and doodles so that I can start on a project whenever the mood strikes.

You can choose to have a physical book or sketch book or you can also take pictures of anything and everything that catches your fancy, and that you would like to try your hand

How to make a Smash Book the Upcycled way Part 2

So I finally got done with my Smash Book 2011 and here is where you can see final pictures. I started on my own version of the Smash book too a couple of days ago and since I had the weekend to play around I did make some progress.

My upcylced version of the smash book was supposed to be made using only recycled craft items or things that I was going to throw away. In the last post I talked about the many materials I would use. From mailers, to old magazines, to old scrapbook paper and printed photographs for the pages to soda cans and plastic for the