Another Storage Solution

I thought I'd share with you another storage solution......how to keep your special ATCs together.  Now, I do have a 7 Gypsies ATC spinner, but it is so crammed full of them I can't even see them any more.  And certainly there is no room for any additional ones.

The ATCs I'm talking about are the ones I received from my cruise mates on last year's Tim cruise. I wanted to put them in a book, but didn't want to use adhesive on their backs.  Gotta be able to flip them over and see who did them.  Let me explain a bit about the book.  Weeks before sailing I decided to make a travel journal.  I altered an existing book for this purpose.....glued some pages together for added strength,  removed some pages,  gessoed all the pages and very lightly decorated them with inks, paints, stains and glazes.  This is the cover, and in case you're wondering why the L in England is off to the side, go ahead and have a good laugh at my expense.  I think it was literally weeks after completing it before I noticed that I had left the L out.  I wasn't about to re-do it, so I just put the L next to the rest of the word. I was so proud that all the letters fit on the cover so nicely.  Hah!  But, I digress.....

And here are a few of the pages after they were decorated, or I should say, prepped for journaling:

Why are they blank, almost a year after the cruise?  Well, the very first project we did with Tim was a travel journal, so I used that for my notes and memorabilia, and decided to use the one I'd made to hold my ATCs.  But I couldn't come up with a satisfactory means of keeping them in the book.  You know I'm a big proponent of using what I have, and what I have is a great big box of 3 1/2 x 5 1/2" coin envelopes.

Just the right size.....first I sealed the flap shut.  Then I cut the envelope down the middle:

I used a 1" circle punch to create a little half circle on the tops....makes putting the ATCs in and removing them so much easier.  

I used a very strong adhesive (with my Scotch ATG) to attach the holders to the pages.  Two fit well on each page in my 5 1/2 x 8 1/2" book.  I did minimal decorating of the envelopes.  I was just anxious to finish this project and get my cruise ATCs in their new home, but naturally you can ink and stamp and emboss as much as you like.   Here are some sample pages:

And you can see that I am still stencil-crazy.  Each and every page and most of the envelopes have some sort of stenciling on them.  Love, love, love those stencils!

If I had more ATCs to store I could have put envelopes on both sides of the pages, but as it is, they all fit well with this layout and any time I want to relive those wonderful memories I have these precious little works of art all in one place.