Art Journals & Button Dilema Resolved

I made these art journals for the girls. I got this idea from Shanna & thought it would be a great solution to a problem around here. You see they steal my printer paper or sneak into my cardstock & swipe all the white paper!

They like to create masterpieces daily so thanks to Shanna I altered these 3" binders & made them look pretty. I added a couple of folders so they can keep their "Webkinz" adoption certificates in them among other things. I also put in some regular notebook paper. And the best thing I added?? It was a ream of PLAIN PAPER that was pre-punched so they can draw to their heart's content!! Now they'll leave my stuff alone right??

The idea is also to have a place so they can keep all their work in 1 place & not having it fly all over the house or ending up in the trash only to hear "Mommy have you seen the valentine I was making for you & Daddy?" Not that that has actually happened....this year....

DISCLAIMER: These are some crappy pics but it was raining & dreary here & the best I could come up with. **SIGH** I also never cropped them before posting here so please don't judge me on my empty fireplace mantle that should have been put back to normal after packing the Christmas decorations. **SIGH**

These are the front of the binders. I used some really old Disney papers from my stash that I don't see myself using in reality but I HAD to have them at the time! LOL!
Marissa's favorite Princess is Ariel so I pulled out some supplies & went at it. Think it came out cute. She LOVED it when I surprised her with it & explained the whole reason behind it all.

Gianna is totally into Princess Aurora. I gave her the choice of Auroa or Cinderella just in case but she stuck with Aurora. Got to use my new scallop circle punch--love that thing!!

I couldn't in good conscience leave the spine of the binders plain so I spruced them up too. Blame my anal quirkiness.

And since I did the spines I HAD to do the back covers. Plus I got to use up my papers which is my real reason for doing this.
Since it looked a lttle plain I used my new punch again & my 7 Gypsies stamp.
Yep here too.

Now that that's done. I am going to share my resolution to my button dilema of the other day. They aren't my ideal jars like the great big jars at Target that I really want but don't have room for or the color coded jars like Laura has in her scrap room that I dream about or the CUTE bucket Heather has but it was handy & free! I came across these jars in my pantry & thought they might be big enough to hold all my buttons. The 1st one is the larger of the 2 jars so I filled it with all my random buttons from various places. The purple lid fits in with my purple themed scrap room that I hope to have one day. I'm sure I'll be altering this in some way but for the time being it is what it is.

It's a good size jar & might be able to fit ALL the buttons together but I'm not sure if I should mix the 2 jars yet. The next jar is the prettier jar. I got it at BJ's last year I think & it was filled with pistachios. I knew I would find something to use the jar for once the nuts were all gone.
Inside are all my American Crafts, Daisy D's & Foof-A-La buttons. The colors don't look as pretty as the 1st jar but they are fun to shake when I need to release some tension! I'm still debating whether I should mix the 2 jars together since I don't really submit my work to magazines. Not even sure if they will all fit in the cute jar....can't you just tell that I'll be using more buttons on my LO's in the future?? Or maybe create another button masterpiece...ahhh the possibilities!!