How to make a Smash Book the Upcycled way Part 1

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

The Smash Books craze and how to start a smashing upcycling adventure! – Back on Track Part 4

Yes! I am back on track. After coming back to my Pretty Pink Smash Folio armed with an action plan, I did much better. I still feel bad about some of the pictures that are smudged, but I have decided that once the book is done I will go back and reprint and replace the ones that are really bothering me. That way I will be happy with the finished result 🙂

I did make some progress today. First like I said I would, I made a rough plan on paper and wrote down all the different things that I

The Smash Books craze and how to start a smashing upcycling adventure! – A bit of a detour Part 3

Ok. So yesterday didn’t go according to plan at all. I had all my pictures printed and ready and like I shared with y’all I was going to make piles according to the month and then stick all the memorabilia and all the pictures and then build on that base. Well…like I said the plan didn’t quite work out…at ALL! 😦

First I figured it would be good to go with themes instead of months. And so I started making a list of all the major themes, all the major events that took place in 2011. Here is my list so far: Weddings, Birthdays, Dinners, Out to Lunch, Picnics, Life at Work, Travel and

The Smash Books craze and how to start a smashing upcycling adventure! Part 2

So finally all my pictures have been printed. I had made a folder for all the pictures I wanted printed for the year 2011 and was astounded to see that I had over 120 pictures that HAD to be included in my Smash folio. This is after I went through the folder again and again and deleted anything extra. Geez! Talk about a busy year! 🙂

2011 has been a year of decisions, mixed feeling and health, ups and downs and some major happenings. I am really looking forward to going over the year through this craft project and to enter the new year, hopefully wiser for all my experiences.

Scrapbooking…the altered way

I love scrapbooking and have done it in one form or another for the past 12 years. I started off with a scrapbook that was made out of a few colored sheets of construction paper stapled together when I was 12. Each page had a collage made out of all the memorabilia that I had collected on a family trip to Austin, TX. Everything from newspaper clippings to restaurant napkins to tickets and photographs came together and told a story in those pages. Each page had a theme and represented one fun thing that we did on the trip.

As I started getting more serious about crafting and learnt more, I moved to ring binders and patterned paper. The layouts were now embellished with a few stickers and there were pockets and fold out pages to add some visual interest.

Then, on another vacation, when I was taking some time out to indulge myself and

Sentimental about School

The days we spend in high school are usually the best ones in our life, and once you have passed those golden years behind it really helps if you have something that takes you back to that time so that you can relive some of those memories. Even though time machines have not been built just yet we do have scrapbooks to preserve our memories and capture the flavor of days gone by.

The scrapbook that I am sharing with you today is one that I made of my high school days. Concerts, Fundraisers, tough exams, parties, science projects, school council elections and impromptu get-togethers are all captured in this book.

I have used a number of different techniques on these pages and I will describe some of them here. Try these out and let me know how your pages turned out.

 

Altered Books – A great way to scrapbook!

I recently got hooked to Altered Art and have been playing around with many techniques lately. I especially love to alter books and turn them into scrapbooks. Recently on a trip to South Korea I bought a book in Korean and had a blast using it as a backdrop for all the memorabilia and pictures that I had taken while there. It really is very simple to make great altered pages using very basic techniques. First I glued a few pages together and ripped others out to make room for all the extra stuff I would be gluing inside. Then I proceeded to give a wash of color to each new page.