"Stories" Altered Mini Book | Carol Chastain

Happy Thursday Friends! Today I am sharing with you the beginnings of an altered mini album. I found this book at a thrift store, and it could not have been more perfect. The title is "Stories" and I grabbed it for the first volume of a project I am working on. This year on the 16th of each month I am taking 16 photos in effort to improve my photography skills...these are some photos from January.

I gutted the book of its original pages and for the binding I punched a hole in the spine and on the folds of the papers and stuck a binder ring through. I used patterned papers from this month's paper add on and just mod-podged them to the cover. Easy peasy. I tried to incorporate all of the stamps that I could and the roller stamp by Amy Tangerine (also an add on) was fun to add randomly on the inside cover of the book.

Here I used the the ampersand and "the good" and "the bad" stamps on some  gold washi and I was sure to use Staz On ink so that it wouldn't smear. I love that bold puffy ampersand right in the middle of those stripes.

So far there is no heavy duty journaling, but with every sentence it adds up to sort of the big picture.

I wanted to add smaller elements to break up the pages and the mini folders were perfect for that!

I know I will use that "my thoughts:" stamp over and over in my projects!

One thing that was fun to do in this album was mix the stamping with my handwriting. I love looking at the words and look for ways to include them as part of my journaling.

I have so much love for the simplicity of this and I can't wait to keep adding photos and stories to this altered book. Hope y'all are enjoying all of the goodness this month and love seeing how everyone is using their stamps.