Recovered Photo Albums on my $0 budget

 All of you will let out a collective gasp when I confess this. I do not scrapbook!  I know it is hard to believe that someone who loves to craft as much as I do has no desire to scrapbook. My mom does though, so I get beautiful scrapbooks as gift. As a result of not being a scrapbooker (is that a word?), I have a huge pile of old fashion photo albums that are very 'dated' and stand out in my office bookshelves (and not for a good reason).

A couple of weeks ago I decided to purge our home office. What I thought was a simple task ended up taking husband and I almost the entire weekend. We both are avid readers, so we had collected hundreds of books that we would never read for a second time. We brutally eliminated all the items we had no intention of reading again and passed them on to family members and charity. We felt amazing.

Our shelves looked so clean and organized but those darn photo albums were even more obvious. I knew I would not be able to cover them with scrapbook paper since the biggest size I have is 12x12 so I had to find another solution. And I DID!

Aren't they prudy! You should have seen the ones that looked like green marble...very fancy :)

For years I have been using the huge roll of Ikea paper (meant for kids to draw on) as gift wrap. We wrap the gift in the thick cream colored paper and then my kids draw on the paper as decoration. Everyone gets a custom wrapping and the entire roll (that has lasted me over 4 years) only cost $5.

I had just enough of the roll left to cover my 5 hideous photo albums. I simply Mod Podged the paper to the  photo album, making sure it can bend to close, and then secured the inside with some invisible tape for extra security. Nice and easy...just the way I like it.

When I put the photo albums up, I loved them, but my husband had a good point, how will we know that was in them.

So with my borrowed Cricut (it might never be returned to my mom..what is the saying "possession is 9/10ths of the law" :) Just kidding mom it will come back.) I cut out some circles in left over teal colored paper and then numbers/letters in a brown paper. Using a glue stick (since I am running out of Mod Podge) I secured the blue circles and then attached the numbers.

Side note: I now understand why my kids are always sticky...glue sticks are horrible! My fingers are sticking to the keyboard even though I have washed them three times!

I made sure I lined all the blue dots up because nothing bothers my husband more than things that are crocked :) Almost everything I make is slightly crocked. I think my eyes aren't parallel :)

 I love how it looks and how much it cost ~$0!

What do you think?
Stephanie

Please remember April 1st is the $0 Budget link party. Please remember to stop by and share you ideas no matter how big or small. If you want something posted, but can't make it, just send me a note and I can post if for you. If you have nothing to share, that is OK too, stop by and see how everyone is saving money with their $0 crafts.