Finishing projects day 1: school mini-albums

Hello!The end of summer is around the corner, and I'll be starting a new year with a new teaching prep. My boys will also be in middle school, so I'm anticipating less free time, at least at first. As a result, I'm trying to finish as many projects as I can this summer.

I've actually accomplished quite a bit--I organized the garage, taped and speckled some wall holes in the house, and begun harvesting the garden and cooking (marinara, anyone?). Now here's a list of some of my scrapbooking projects I had to tackle:

1. Finish creating the boys' 5th and 6th grade school album pages
2. Edit and print photos from Custer S.P. (2011)
3. Create mini albums with thank you cards from school
4. Finish the Disney album (2010)
5. Update the Easter mini-album
6. Complete the iScrap class/album
7. Complete the Get Messy class/album
8. Ask Derick to finish journaling his London album
9. Complete 5 Vacation Faves (2015)
10. Create cards for my Dad
11. Rowan school album photos: 3rd, 5th, and 6th; class photo 4th and 6th
12. Dominic school album photos: 2nd, 4th, and 5th;class photo 3rd and 5th

I'm on my way, as you can see. I completed three things on the list, and I'm within a day or two of finishing 3 more. As a motivational push for me, I am going to share my projects as I finish them. First, the mini albums: I had to clean out my office desk last spring at school since the area was being turned into new classrooms. I found 17 years of thank you notes in the desk and decided to make them into mini albums to keep them more solidly. Here they are:

These first two mini albums include thank you notes given out for teacher's appreciation day. Students send them to teachers they want, so I kept the ones that were the most specific. Because they were the same size, they were easy to scrap I used some older Jillibean Soup kraft file folders to house them. For color, I lined the inside with some bright patterned paper (I dug into my scrap piles for them) and used a bunch of bright, non school accents.

Next are some actual cards.They were irregularly shaped, so a little more difficult to fit in mini albums. Here's what I did:

For these mini albums I did dig into my school themed Iris container for products. I pulled chipboard mini album covers from a 7gypsies mini album for the one on the left, covered it with paper using my 5-inch Xyron, and embellished the cover. The cards are not bound in there, by the way: the ribbon is holding it altogether.

On the right I wanted to use the Report card paper for the covers, so I trimmed some spare cardboard to fit, used the Xyron again to adhere, decorated and tied together with the ribbon like I did with the last album.

Finally, I needed something bigger for the actual letters and printed-emails I've collected through the years, so I used an actual manila folder:

Again, I lined the inside with patterned paper scraps, and for the outside, I dug into the school themed Iris container to finish decorating it. (Note: once I got to this point, I realized I had used basically the same design on each mini album. Different products, but same design. Huh.) Like I did with my first two mini-albums, I used a binder clip to close this. Easy-peasy!

Thank you for letting me share some of my projects! I'll share more this month as I complete them. I doubt I'll finish it all, but boy, will it feel good to empty out more project containers that I've been storing the half finished projects!