Making Project Life and Smashbooking Your Own

I promise I'll quit obsessing with scrapbooking, smashbooking, art journaling and now Project Life soon. In the meantime I wanted to share my latest creation - a custom book. With an arsenal of Aleene's products, a spiral bound book and a hole punch all things are possible.

I can't hardly resist vintage books with cute graphics, big surprise I know. Through my years of hoarding, I mean collecting, I have amassed a few that are binder style with rings that open and close. I see some version of these books almost every time I am the thrift store so they should not be hard to find.

I opted for a 50's Better Homes and Gardens decorating book for my first attempt at journal making. I loved the graphics inside and out. You could always start with a plain ring binder and use Collage Pauge to adhere your own cover graphic.

The first thing I did was remove all the pages and make and add my own. Things like vintage paint by number canvases, pages from board books and even packages of panty hose work great. If you have trouble using a hole punch try a crop-a-dile. I also kept several of the original pages from the book.

Just like a Smashbook I love working with the original graphics in my book. I let the images and colors be my guide for the theme. You can see here where I started dabbling in Project Life. I used some pockets from Sn@pshots and used my hole punch to make them fit in my binder.

The thing I love about this form of scrapbooking is you are encouraged to not make your layouts flat. I have started to dip into my vintage buttons, cabochons and findings. Using a stronger glue like Aleene's Fast Grab is better than your typical glue stick.

My whole journal is pretty free-form. There is no reason why all your pages need to be the same shape or size.

Add wrapping paper, wall paper, scrapbook paper and more to pages using Collage Pauge.

What do you use to keep your pictures in? Scrap book, Smashbook, photo album, phone or computer? Might I suggest making your own. They are a lot more fun to sit through than a slide show of your last vacation.

Be sure to check out more of my posts for I Love to Create here. Also, stop by my blog Naughty Secretary Club and say hello sometime.