I was being crafty around the house

Being crafty hasn't always been my thing. I remember when I was younger, about 8 years old, I had told my mother about my interest in arts and crafts and she put a table in our garage organized with shoe boxes filled with different craft supplies. I remember having a box of crayons, colored pencils, I even had a hot glue gun and different cloth material and sewing needles. I also remember nothing coming out of that glorious craft table, besides the table itself that my friends and I decided to color all over and decorate. As soon as I hit middle school the craft table became more of a work bench for my step father. It wasn't his fault, I just simply outgrew making terrible art.

My craft flame never re-lit until my Junior year of high school where I had the best art teacher of all art teachers combined, Mr. Hotaling. Mr. Hotaling taught me to be more serious with my art. As soon as I started getting more serious, my art became a lot better. I had serious intentions of going to art school to become an art teacher just like Mr. Hotaling. Unfortunately, Mr. Hotaling had bigger and better plans for himself and his family and bought a ranch out in Colorado. He is doing fabulously by the way.

My parents were quick to tell me that my dreams were just that, dreams. As they began to discourage not only their faith in my dreams but their faith in myself, I started looking at other college majors.

Anyways, story aside the reason for this post is because I got a sewing machine for one of my wedding gifts and just thought I would let my readers know what I have been up to with my new fond love of arts and crafts...

So I get a serious attachment to cards. I love getting cards, I love reading them and I love to have them sitting around forever until my husband throws them away. For our wedding, I told my husband, I NEEDED to save our cards. I just couldn't go through with throwing away all of them because to me they are a reminder that our family not only shared that special day with us, but they all had something different and nice to say. All the cards were so sweet! So I came up with the idea of putting them altogether in a binder. Well, trying to find a nice looking binder with our wedding colors proved to be a real challenge. So I decided instead of driving myself crazy looking for one I would make it! That way it can look exactly like I want it to AND it will give me something to do during my free time. So here is a little step-by-step process for anyone interested in doing the same.

Above are my basic supplies. I had to buy a spray glue because I went to three different stores and they were all out of glue guns. Personally, the glue gun is the way to go the spray is hard to control. The "fabric" I used ended up being a tablecloth because I just couldn't find a good fall fabric here and it was cheaper anyways.

As you can tell I did the inside panels first. Then the outside was just one piece. Then I folded over and pasted the outside.

I didn't use the spray for the ribbon because it was really sticky and bled through so I ended up use ModPod which takes a while to dry so I left a heavy object (the wine bottle) on top during the night.

Then you just punch holes in the cards a Voila! Not a hard project for my first in a while!