Made it Myself Mondays & a Giveaway Contest!!!

Happy Monday everyone! Thanks for stopping by to see my"Made It Myself Mondays" challenge project! I'm VERY excited to share this with you today... it's actually one that I posted here before, but I wanted to also share a tutorial with you all!

First... do you all remember the little toilet paper roll album that I did a few weeks ago? Well... I entered it in the American Craft's Flair contest and I got selected as one of the contenders for the grand prize this week! I will offer up another giveaway to one lucky winner that will be chosen out of EVERYONE who votes for me.... All you have to do is "Like" American Crafts on facebook HERE and then you HAVE to go to the photo of my little album and click "like" under the photo so to go to the contest to vote, CLICK HERE! That's it! It's simple!! I can use all the votes you can give me, so share with your friends and family as well and let me know that you did so and I will give you an extra chance in my little drawing... How about I give you a DIY Album kit of your choice? Sound good? Voting ends THIS FRIDAY, so please vote! :-)

Ok, now on to my project...

Here is the album that I posted a few weeks ago in THIS POST.

And here is how you can make your very own!

First, get out your supplies. I saved toilet paper rolls for a little while so I would have enough to try this type of album. I ended up using 4, though you can use more or less. Take your bone folder or your hands, either works, and flatten to toilet paper rolls.

I chose a couple of bright summery colors to paint mine with. You can use just any acrylic paint, the kind I used is by Making Memories. I just painted both sides of the toilet paper rolls and let them dry. I use the little sponge paint brushes, they are usually on sale for next to nothing at craft stores! I also use old boxes to paint on in case you were wondering, it’s easy to clean up! :-) This step is completely optional, if you want more of a vintage look, you could leave them plain.

Next you need to choose your paper for your album. I chose paper from the Heat Wave collection by American Crafts. I also chose plain cardstock to mat the papers on, this is completely up to you, I just like that extra edge around my projects. The mats were cut at 4 x 2.25 inches and the patterned paper was cut at 3.75 x 2 inches. Make sure you measure your toilet paper rolls to get the best measurements for your paper. I found by doing this that different brands of toilet paper have different sizes of toilet paper rolls, that’s something new to me! I cut out enough to have 12 mats, 1 for each page and 4 pull out tags.

This step is completely optional, but some have asked me how I get do the stitching on my projects. Well, I use a regular sewing machine! I stitched one end of each of the toilet paper rolls with a straight stitch and then stitched all of the mats with a zig-zag stitch.

After you’ve done all of that, take your crop-a-dile or a regular hole punch and punch a couple of holes in the ends of your toilet paper rolls. If you stitched them, make sure you punch the holes on the stitched end, you need to leave the other end open for your pull out tags. Assemble your album together with binding rings, I used 3/4 inch, but if you use more toilet paper rolls, you might want to go a little larger on these. I buy all of my binding rings at an office supply store, you can buy them there in bulk :-)

Glue down your mats to the toilet paper rolls. I used my atg because it gives a really good stick for projects like this.

Now for the fun part! I added ribbon to the binding rings and also stapled a couple pieces of ribbon to the ends of the pull out tags. In case you were wondering why I have a lighter sitting there… well, I always heat set my ribbons so they don’t fray. You can buy fray-check from the store, but I think it’s a little more time consuming, so I just lightly burn the edges of my ribbons. Be careful though! Some ribbons are more flammable than others! You don’t want to catch your project on fire, so use caution!

I wanted a bright & cheery summertime album, so I found some patterns of a sun and some clouds. These svg patterns are from Little Scraps of Heaven Designs. I also got out my stamps and embossing powders, for this project I used the Summer Vacation stamp set from Pink by Design.

After I stamped my sentiment, I wanted to add a little something extra to the clouds. I used a Quick Glue pen and some doodlebug glitter to add some dazzle around the edges.

Now it’s time to embellish! I absolutely LOVE to add flowers to pretty much everything I make! They are a great embellishment and can really dress up a project! After many years of wasting $ on expensive little glue dots, I discovered that a hot glue gun is one of the most essential tools that every scrapper needs! I use it to glue down all of my embellishments except the ones that I choose to make 3-d with pop dots.

After you’ve got your cover finished, you can add little elements to the inside of your album. I used some of the chipboard elements from the Heat Wave collection that matches the paper I used. I also added some flowers throughout. Don’t over embellish these pages though, the mats are relatively small and it might be hard to add photos if you add to much!

And there you have it, my mini album made out of toilet paper rolls! One cool thing about this project is that you can dig into your scraps and make this album completely from scraps! It’s a good way to use up materials instead of throwing them away.

Lastly, I need to make a little announcement... remember the post I made the other day about my "Believe" cards and the Scrapbooks, etc contest? Well... I WON this past week!!!! What that means is each week they have a weekly voting contest over at Scrapbooks, etc for their Craft It Forward program, at the end of each week, there is one winner. I am the winner from last week. So at the end of the month, Scrapbooks, ETC will pick one of the winners from the weeks that month and they will win the grand prize which is $ for Charity! So I hope and pray that they pick me because I would love to give some $ to the Bradley Angel House! Now those of you who voted, I promised a little giveaway. make sure that you post on my facebook page or let me know that you voted (if you commented here, I got ya!), I will do a giveaway later this week or possibly next week (we are in the process of moving so it could be a few days)