Long Distance Project-Sheila's

When I saw these binder clips as the featured buy on My Craft Channel, I knew that I would get two sets of them to share with Maura as a Long Distance Project Challenge.

Then I had to figure out what I was going to do with mine. I decided on a practical use.

When I finally saw the Smash books at my local craft store, I jumped on the bandwagon and bought one. And then it sat unused on my craft table for a long time. I just couldn't think of what to do with it. But I loved the size and the kraft covers so I decided to make it into an actual binder.

First I used an XActo knife and cut out the inside pages along the spine and pulled out the binding coils. I trimmed the edge of all the pages and put them in my paper stash to use in other projects.

I just used the two holes already in the spine of the book to adhere my binder clip with some nuts and bolts. I found that I didn't even need any glue. Once tightened, it held perfectly. I now had a binder!

As far as the use for my new binder....I collect recipes that I know I eventually want to make. I cut them out of magazines, people give me recipes on scraps of paper, I print them out from blogs and I stuff them all into a big clip.

 Now they are nice and neat in my new binder.

I used one of the Smash papers for the inside and made labels for the different categories.

 I hole punched all the recipes and put them in. I decided to keep the simple kraft covers that I like and added some thicker letter stickers. The big rubber band is an old 7Gypsies one.

I keep my new binder in the kitchen along with my other recipe books and as I try new ones, I pull them out and keep adding to it when I find more.

I'm glad that I went more practical and useful for this project, but I'm pretty sure Maura went the creative route and I'll probably want to use another one of the clips to do the same once we see her project. I can't wait to see what she came up with.