Making a Recycled Album

A recent fun challenge over at The Scrap Room was to make a mini album from something in your recycling bin. A cereal box or something made of cardboard was an obvious choice for the cover material. However, I took it a step further and everything I used for my mini album, except the book rings and alphas for the front, was something I saved from the recycling!

Here is the before pic of the materials I used:
Here is the mini album I made:
Materials Used (non-recyclable): Stampendous Opaque Embossing Powder, Distress Ink in Antique Linen, Walnut Stain and Black Soot, scissors, hole punch, various Alphas (from opened packages only!), Alcohol Inks in Stream & Wild Plum, pearl beads and a Tim Holtz flower die used on my Epic Six

I used newspaper, which I doubled up, for the base of my paper on the cereal box. I inked it up with some Tim Holtz Distress Inks, embossed it with some opaque Stampendous embossing powder and then inked it some more. I then roughed up the edges a bit and inked them with a darker color.

For the plastic flowers, I had to think a little. I cut the neck and bottom off of the bottle and was left with a circle of plastic that I cut in the middle to make a sheet. My Martha Stewart punch that I wanted to use wasn't cutting all the way through the bottle, so I decided to use my Epic Six machine with some Tim Holtz dies. Have I mentioned that I love Tim Holtz's products?? The big die cut through the plastic like butter, it was so easy! I then used Adirondack alcohol inks to color the flowers and added some pearls on top of them with some glossy accents.

Here is a close up of one of the flowers:
I plan on using the album to create swatches of my ink colors and Copic marker colors. That way I can see the color on paper when I am making something but I can also toss it into my purse when I am headed out shopping for supplies. Then, I have an easy list of what I already have!

This was a great way to save some items from the trash and also showed me what I can create when I sit down and think about it. What can you come up with from your recycling bin?