DIY Project: Altered Printers Tray

I like documenting my life. I take lots of pictures and I make lots of scrapbooks, but sometimes I want to make something a little bit different and still capture a special story.

In January, Jeff and I drove from Los Angeles to San Francisco along the Pacific Coast Highway. This trip has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember. It was even more incredible than I ever could have imagined. I wanted to capture that magical time with an art piece I could hang on the wall and look at every single day.

About This Project: To make this project I used a Maya Road Printers Tray and some papers and embellishment from the Basic Grey line Mon Ami by Kelly Purkey. I thought the soft color palette really matched the palette of our day's photos. Using a single product line made the assembly of the project very easy. I knew everything would coordinate together, and look great with the tones I already had going on in the photos.

This is a great way to display photos, memorabilia, and 3-D objects that might not be suited to a traditional scrapbook. I added a seashell from the beach to box in the lower right-hand corner that I wouldn't have been able to use in my memory-keeping otherwise.

Project Notes:

• I used foam squares to raise up some of the photos and embellishments and give the whole project more depth.

• I stuck with one paper line + coordinating stickers to make the project cohesive.

• In some boxes, I just used a single sheet of patterned paper to keep the project from being visually overwhelming.

Have you created a non-scrapbook memory-keeping project? 

Edit: 11/5/2023 — this is still up in my hallway today. I love looking at it.