Making A Bound Mini Album From Leftovers

Happy Thursday everyone!  Erica here with another Geek Lab post. Today I am pulling out another great tool from my stash to show you a great way to use up those bits and pieces of kits that you may have laying around and do not know what to do with.  When Simple Stories came out with their I {Heart} Summer collection I was in LOVE!  The colors were bright, fun and screamed SUMMER!  I had to have the collection and every single piece of it!  Well once I was finished with all my projects I had all kinds of bits and pieces left over.  Today I am going to show you a great way to take these bits and pieces and create a quick and easy notebook/mini album. Here is a look at what I am starting with today.

The Cinch is a binding machine made by We R Memory Keepers and it makes creating albums quick and easy!  First I took my pile of Simple Stories scraps and cut them down to various lengths and widths.  I wanted my album to be fun, interactive and have many different sized pages.  

Once I had the paper all cut to the lengths I wanted I put them in 3 different piles and then began stacking them together to create my album starting with the largest paper on the bottom since this would be the last page of my album. 

Now it was time to get my trusty old Cinch machine out and start punching holes in my paper.  It is very simple to use and all the directions are listed right on the machine itself!  I would try it out on some scratch paper first but once you get the hang of the machine you pretty much know where to put your paper and what pins to pull.

There are many different colors and sizes of wire you can purchase for your Cinch.  I decided on a piece of black wire that I had in my stash that I thought would go well with the touches of black in this collection.  After all your holes are punched all you have to do is take your wire and thread it through the holes and trim your wire with some wire cutters. 

Now that your album is put together all that is left to do with it is have fun and fill it with great embellishments and memories to cherish forever!

I hope this post inspires you to pull out your binding machine and scraps that has been stashed away and if you do not have a binding machine an album like this can easily be put together with a basic hole punch and some wire or binder rings!  Thanks so much for stopping today and enjoy your day!