Doing It The Hard Way

It is no secret in my house that I can be very stubborn. My whole life has been spent doing things the hard way, when I could have easily chosen an easier path. Today's mini album project is no exception!


I got the idea of doing a mini album with toilet paper rolls on Pinterest last year. I pinned the idea away, saved some toilet paper rolls, and forgot about it (like most of my Pinterest projects haha). I recently saw a different person share another toilet paper album, and went back to the tutorials I had pinned. This is the beginning of where my problems started.

I had several pins with different designs that I liked. I started the mental planning phase by picking bits and pieces that I liked, and began thinking about how I could fit them together. (note to self, not all ideas work together)

I looked at a lot of photos, and read a couple words (there were SO many words). Here is where I messed up. I thought to myself "I will just figure it out as I go" and I dug in. Well, I got one thing right! I did figure it out as I went, but not until I messed up several steps, and had to undo things.....a couple times!

In the end, I ended up with two mini albums, since I liked both the hole-punched version and the accordion fold binding version, and found out those two items don't really mix, at least not with the small, stiff toilet paper rolls. I managed to get a couple cute projects, but honestly, beside looking cute, they don't seem very useful to me. They are super small, and I am not sure that I would really use them for anything.

Thankfully, I made them with a cereal box, cardboard, some old scrapbooking paper and of course, toilet paper rolls, so it was a cheap, fun, recycling project that taught me a lot. I may have learned some lessons the hard way, but I guarantee they will not soon be forgotten! Take my advice though, save yourself some trouble, and just read the instructions on the tutorial blogs! 😂

Since they turned out ok, I decided to go ahead and share them here for the Mini Album Makers Blog challenge. You can check out the Mini Album Makers Blog Challenge here

So, here are the pics you've been waiting for!

Here is when I got the first album all glued together, AND hole punched before realizing that I glued them wrong! The pages didn't open further than this. Also, I realized a hole punched paper tube, can't really be glue-bound too. So, I disassembled it all, and started over.

Second time is a charm, as I left spacing and glued the folded binding inside the tube, not on both outsides like the first time.

Here it is assembled with the cereal box cover.

Looks more like an album, AND the pages open now haha

Now I have to remove the black paper and cover all the holes I punched.

Final albums: one with glued accordion-fold binding, and one hole-punched ribbon-tied.

Here is a glimpse at a few of the pages inside the two albums.

I added some pull out sections, pages, envelopes, and tags.

Each toilet paper tube has a pull out tag.

Well, that's a wrap! Hope you enjoyed seeing these, and hopefully you are smarter than me, and can learn from someone else's mistakes! Trust me, don't be stubborn and do things the hard way. 

Any ideas what to do with these? Tempted to scrap them, and try a bigger "mini" album. 

What are you work on this week?

Until Next Time~

Shari