Hello there =)

The cold weather has come and gone, the birds are chirping and we can feel the warmth of the sun on our faces.  Some days have already forced us to put on the air conditioning.  I have a love/hate relationship with spring and summer.  Hate the heat and allergies, love the A/C =)

No doubt, we all just spent the last several months huddled over a hot cup of coffee/tea keeping our noses and fingertips warm.  But not too warm; gotta use a sleeve so we don’t burn ourselves.

And I don’t know about you but… I have a hard time throwing things out lately. So this happened…

Yeah. Problems.

My recent peek into the mixed media art world has made me a bit of a hoarder.  The latest obsession: cardboard coffee sleeves.  I just knew something could be made with them.  I was so convinced of it, I had co-workers saving theirs for me.

Everything has possibility. Everything ends up in a bag, box or drawer just waiting to be used.

Sadly, the day never comes…

Until today! We’re going to put these coffee sleeves to work, again!

Mini Summer Memory Book

So here am I with a ton of coffee sleeves and not a clue what to do with them.  Not. A. Clue.  Like always, I turned to Pinterest for inspiration.  There I found it, a mini summer memory book.

[Tweet “Let your habits of winter be a place to record the story of your summer.”]

If you are a big scrapbooker with loads of pictures and stuff, this will probably not be for you.  If you need a pretty little space to recap the week with a few lines of text, you may be in luck.

I started by cutting all of the sleeves in half along the natural fold/perforation.  I did not use both halves, just one.  The ones I used had flaps on the inside.  You know what that means don’t you?  Bonus space!

With a hole punch, I popped two holes in the edge for my ring binding later.  I do not recommend using a 3-hole punch if you can help it…

You’ll see on the flap portion, the hole punches are snipped to open up the holes.  If you plan on using the flaps this is necessary to be able to lift them once the rings are in.  I figured that out after I made the whole thing… Geez Sarah ;)

Above and below are several of my favorite pages.  OK, it’s almost all the pages.  Sorry, we’re a bit blurry…

The book is a total of 16 pages: 15 for noting memories and a back page to wrap things up.

I covered each page in scrapbook paper and embellished with stickers, stamps, wood pieces and punches.  I’ll have links to some supplies (on Amazon) below.

As you look at the pictures, you’ll see that some pages have two flaps, others one and some none.  I wanted to switch it up.  Variety is the spice of life, right?

As I said before, there are 15 pages.  That’s enough for a “page” and bit more to let me jot down memories for each week from June through August.

Let the first adventure begin!  And then get recorded =)

How will you record your summer memories?