A new challenge- Lessology!

When I heard about this new blog, http://lessology.blogspot.com/, I had to be a part of it. One of the main rules is that you must use one item that is recycled or upcycled. I wasn't too sure what upcycled really meant so on to Wikipedia I went. (Hey, that rhymes!). From what I learned upcycle is when you take something of little to no value and add something to increase the value of the item. So for their first challenge the ladies at Lessology asked for a project that uses an old book. I decided right then I was going to make something using a recycled item and turn it into an upcycled item. Are you with me so far? lol! This project was VERY tedious to say the least. But what turned into the biggest challenge for me wasn't anything craft related, oh no, for me it was this right side shoulder issue I'm having. (I'll post more about that another time, but thank you all for your get well wishes and prayers- that WAS what got me through this project, well, that and my stubborn determination!)


I took an old photo booklet that pictures would come in when they were developed at Wal Mart and created something fun. Here are the before pictures:

                                                                  A recycled item!


And this is what I upcycled it into:




Not a Cook Book- A Cookie Book!




Pictures on the left- recipe on the right!




Pull the recipe card out with the mini oven mitt to write on back of card!




The inside of back cover- with additional note cards!

Here's the making of the little page tags:



Once done they were glued to little paper clips!

 These pictures don't even begin to do this Cookie Book justice. With 14 pages in this Cookie Book I'm sure you can imagine the work that went into this. Embossing, inking edges, cutting the little oven gloves in three layers, attaching them to paper clips to form tabs, tying tiny ribbons on the clips, etc, etc...Yes it was a lot of work! I had to stop many times to ice down the shoulder but I was determind to finish this to be in this first challenge! I have to say, even though I am very happy with the end results I am more proud of myself for not giving up! I did it! Now you might be asking...how is this upcycled? Well, I took something worth nothing and made it worth at least .50 cents! ;)

Thank you friends for being so understanding on my lack of posting the last few weeks. I have been really trying to visit your blogs in between working on this and icing! I am going to take a few days now to do nothing but visit all my friends here. On Thursday I get to see an Ortho doctor, I'll keep you posted!


{{Hugs}}

Susan
p.s. I should add, all the paper along with the recipe cards were from Close to my Heart.