my Un-Smashed Smash Book - making it your own

Hi everyone!  I got sucked into the whole Smash Book craze even though I resisted it for quite awhile.  But, once I started buying things I just couldn't stop.  It was all of those done stickie-notes, envelopes, tape, ugh....just too fun to look at and collect!  And then I let it sit.  And sit.....and sit............and sit................you get the idea. lol  Then I started to feel guilty about it.  Here was all of this stuff that I had spent my hard-earned money on and it was collecting dust in a basket on the floor.  So I pulled it all out and let it sit some more, looking at it every now and then.  I wasn't sure what my problem was, but I just wasn't excited about using it for some reason.  Then I got this bright idea to cut it apart, add some of my own papers and envelopes, re-bind it and go from there.  I thought about it for a whole week.  I mean, did I really want to take a box knife to my $15 journal that was perfectly fine and cut it all apart? Was I crazy?  I finally decided that if it didn't work, I could salvage the papers from inside and chuck the cover in the trash or use it for something else.  At least I could use the papers in my other journals on on scrapbook pages.  So, I  finally got brave and had at it.

You can watch a video of me making my "Un-Smashed Smash Book" here.

And, below you will find tons of pictures of my finished book. I'm really, really happy with it and started adding goodies to it as soon as I finished it!  I think I'm addicted. lol

 The cover was embossed with flowers, so I used my  Inktense Pencils and

Neo Color II's to color in the image.  I added the white dots to help things

pop.  And some odd's and ends in the bottom corner.

I bound my book with satin seam binding that I had colored last year

with some color washes.  Be sure to put Fray-Check on ends so your

ribbon doesn't unravel!

I had originally punched holes in the front cover much farther in that I had wanted and 

ended up punching new holes closer to the edge.  That left me with three holes on the front, so

I decided to sew buttons there to cover the holes.  In another photo of the inside cover, you can

see the bottons that are sewn to the other side of the ones pictured above.

 Here are the buttons that are sewn to the buttons on the front cover.

 I really liked this vellum page that came with the book, so I decided to

color it in wish Sharpies to highlight the words and pictures better.

I drew this girl a couple of weeks ago and decided to add her as my first page.

Alien cut from a box of Puffs tissues....my 5 year old will be very angry when

she sees this because she was saving the box to make something out of it.  I

do have another one of these upstairs, so she will still get one for herself. lol

I just thought he was too cute to not use!  And, exactly the thing to put in your

Smash Book, right? ;-)

Adding things here and there and will be adding more to these pages

as I go along.....

Here are some photos of the type of extra pages that I added to my

Un-Smashed Smash Book.  I pretty much went through my stash of

papers and pulled out whatever caught my eye.....

book pages......

pieces of music paper and papers with doodles on them....

ancient index pages for Club Scrap kits and scrap paper

with excess color sprays from stencils on them....

scrap paper that I've created other art journal pages on and 

one with a doodle made by one of my children....

 I even added some envelopes....

I hope that you enjoyed seeing how I turned my Smash Book into something that's truly ME and now something that I will be using for sure!  I'd love to see how you're using your Smash Books, so please leave a link in the comments if you would like to share!  And, be sure to visit often, because I plan on sharing pages from my book as I complete them.

Thanks so much for visiting and I hope you have a wonderful day! 

di