DIY or Dont: Keepsake Book

Hey Bloggers! How is it going? Its Thursday and you know what that means. Time for Casey to share her silly projects with you.

Last week we had a lesson on organizing. I know at least one person took my advice...After making fun of me... :)

This week I am going to give you a way to organize all your little "memories" from trips you take.

You know like Post cards/ amusement park tickets/ brochures/ Maps/ pictures etc.

Those are the things you store in a box and tell yourself you will get around to putting it in a scrap book or something. Well look no further (In theory) i found a solution. It was one of those Pins that I found months and months ago that I said "someday" Well I noticed it was one of the ones that was getting a lot of repins I decided to make it my next project. I guess these things are called smash books...Not really sure. First I sorted out all of my tickets and what not's. I want you to know that I did this while eating diner and watching Time Travelers wife. *Sniff* It took very minimal effort. Just be sure you are ready to be using a single hole punch. My hand hurt so much after the little bit I did I couldn't really finish. Of course I don't know if they have "good" single hole punchers but mine was not good.

The one I had the most brochures and such was from when my parents took me to Tennessee... Back in 2000...Yup that's how long these things have been sitting in a box. I have stuff from further back but this was my all time favorite trip we took one summer. Just to give you a little background I am a HUGGGGE Elvis fan. At 25 years old that's not really all that common. Now picture a ten year old excited to see Graceland (Elvis' house for all you non-fans) That is really not all that common. We went to Dolly Wood/ Loretta Lynn's "House" The Ryman Auditorum, Sun studios, Graceland *squee!*and a lot of other places. It was the most amazing trip ever! I met a lot of cool people on that trip and made a lot of great memories. Of course it made my Elvis obsession much much worse but that's not the point.

The point is my mom saved everything from our tickets to our self guided tour books. I can't just throw that stuff away! So here is what I did.

I know its not really exciting. Of course the Pin looked way cooler! I just have no talent when it comes to paper I guess. But if you want to attempt this goal all you need is a single hole punch, some book binding rings and your memories.

These are the book binding rings. I bought these on Amazon. I should have thought about the size more because these ended up being way bigger than I wanted. I looked in kmart tonight to see if I could get smaller ones. They do not have them. I imagine you can get them an stores like Office Max. This was not a good size to do this with. My mistake. Don't let it be yours. This project has a lot of potential just do it better than I did. :D

I organized all my tickets and other papers to figure out which categories I would do...well as we know now I only did one so most of that stuff got shoved back in the box.

Ghia my dog wanted to help.

After I got all my Tennessee "memories" I separated them to.

How you organize it is completely up to you.

Now in the original pin it didn't have a cover page or anything just the cards. I kind of liked that idea for what they used it for (Mostly Birthday cards and such) but my problem is I didn't want it to look all random. Of course I can make everything all uniform so I thought if I covered it up with a piece of pretty paper it would help. Not so much. If you decide to do a cover page than just measure it to your biggest piece and cut it.

After a long time of punching the holes I was able to put it all together. Now with the holes I took my smallest piece and decided where I wanted the holes to be on that and measured them against the bigger pieces.I didn't take pictures of it all but hopefully enough to get the idea.

The post cards were a cool idea.

The only issue I have with this is it doesn't look as uniform as I would like it (But that's just me.) I should have used smaller rings

And the holes.

I had to get reinforcement labels to fix some of my mistakes. I am telling you using a single hole punch was not easy and I recommend trying to find something where you can use a three hole punch. It will make your life a lot easier!

My goal is when ever we travel now to collect things like this. Also get a post card and write what we did and what our favorite things were. It will be a nice Keepsake! That's the word I have been trying to think of this whole blog! Oh my god you have no idea how much that was bugging me! LOL Keepsakes! That's what this thing is a keepsake for all your keepsakes. Ok I could go back and change it but I am going to leave it like this.

Anyways so I shared my cool idea. Overall I think this was