{ATC Binder} and {WOYWW}

Hello! I hope everyone is having a great week thus far.  It's Wednesday so I guess it's time to share WOYWW :) Please visit Julia on her blog for more info on WOYWW.

Here is what I've been busy doing:

This is actually a project I started awhile back but never finished till now.  I decorated a mini album binder with the intention of making it a place I could put some of my art experiments in.  I like to play with different techniques/mediums and thought it would be fun to have that all in one binder that I could go refer to for some inspiration. 

I was at the dollar store the other day and found some trading card plastic sleeves and bought them because, well, they were a dollar, and I was also thinking that I'd like to play around making some ATC's.  I know I'm way behind on the times, but it was something that I never got around to trying :p

When I got home I scoured my space for a spare binder to store my plastic sleeves in and although I found some, they were just not pretty enough to store some artsy atc's. I could have decorated a binder but I just was not motivated to. As I pondered what to do I spotted something from the corner of my eye sitting on a dusty shelf, yep it was the mini binder I decorated way back when. So light bulb flashing in my mind I decided that was where my future atc's will be housed in.

So, to get to the point as this is becoming a rather dull long post :p I began by trimming down the plastic sleeves to size. The sheets come with 9 pockets (3 across and 3 down) but I had to trim off 1 pocket in each row of 3 in order to fit the binder, no biggie :p 

The plastics were pretty flimsy so I decided to reinforce where the holes would be for binding by adding a strip of light weight chipboard. I tried at first to sew the plastic and chipboard so that it would look pretty but that didn't turn out as I hoped (I was able to sew 2, then the machine quit on me).  As I've mentioned in a previous post somewhere I don't own a sewing machine, what I do have is one of those mini machines that are suppose to be for scrapbooking. There's no way I would ever consider that a sewing machine (at least not with a straight face :p). Anyway, now I know why that machine has been sitting on my shelf collecting dust for the past 8 yrs or so!

I ended up stapling the chipboard to the plastic with my TimHoltz tiny attacher.  I then decided to add a piece of washi tape to cover the staples and make it more pretty.  I punched some holes with my crop-o-dile and then I was done!

Here are some photos of the binder and the plastic sleeve inserts:

Can't wait to start filling it up!  I hope you enjoyed a peek at what's on my workdesk this Wednesday.  Now that I've shared, I'm off to clear off my desk so I can start on those atc's.  If anyone knows of a good place for swapping please let me know :)

Have a great day. Take Care!