My Crafty Attempt

Here in the great state of Arizona there is a definite lack of basements. I have been given two reasons for this

1.) The clay in the desert floor
2.) The monsoons; you would flood even if you had a basement

This has resulted in a very interesting shift in my storage habits. Before we moved here, I would take anything that I wasn't sure that I wanted to get rid of yet down into a dark corner in the basement and store it. These days I have to be a little more creative. Our garage has a lot of storage with cabinets lining the walls, but there are certain things that I don't want to put into the garage, (what if scorpions crawl in??) or in the storage shed where our bikes are kept. One such item is my stash of scrapbooking paper. I have hoarded this paper for years, honestly I haven't scrapbooked since I got married...needless to say I got too far behind and have given it up completely. But, sometimes I walk into the office and I glance over to my shelf dedicated to my paper and usually I am very happy just to see it there. This did not happen the other day, instead I found myself needing to justify why that paper was just sitting there, taking up more than its fair share of room.

So...I started out with a plain notebook like this one:

Then, I thought I would cover it like this:

Sort of a sad little attempt, don't you think? But..it makes me smile every time I get on a conference call and need to take notes. My bedazzled notebook made me want to do something with my other scrap paper hanging around.

I have a ton of paper from work that was used on one side in presentations or other handouts, but are blank on the back side. I had been using them as scrap paper and I decided to make them a little more "fashionable".

I clipped the paper together with big binder clips and held at the top with cardboard. Then, I took a paintbrush and elmers glue...and about 10 coats later I had this:

I can now take notes in style!