Smash Books !!!

My New love in the craft world is "Smash books" by K&Company! These are so much fun. It's basically a spiral bound hard covered book that contains decorated pages inside. The idea behind this book is that it is a place to place all your little memorabilia that you would have stashed away in the "junk" drawer or in an old shoebox on the top shelf of your closet. It's a great place to keep old stubs from concerts,tickets to movies,games and other places you've been. That great restaurant that you visited and has those really cool coasters for their beverages or the matchbook covers you collected through the years !  A great place to keep those odd ball snapshot photos that you love but don't want to put in your family photo album/or scrapbook. You get the idea , right? Here is a picture of a smash book .

this image is from "Kim's Kreative Korner" What a awesome job she has done. Love it !
 *This company, K&company did not estimate just how well this product would fly off the shelves in every store they put them. Which was just a few and then on their website and maybe some other online craft stores ( I am not sure which ones but I have seen them advertise on some different ones). So needless to say they have not been easy to find. I was lucky to find the last one at my Beverly's craft & Fabric store. It was the black one. Then later *a few weeks later* I went back to see if they had restocked them yet. They had not. However I was lucky enough to be able to  purchase the display one (pink) for get this HALF OFF. So it was $6.00 and some change ! woo hoo. They had slightly decorated the cover but it was all easy to remove items. So I got some scrapbook decorations and a smash book ! Gotta love that when you get a great deal. It was in brand new shape too because it was kept on the very top shelf of the end cap which show cased all of the items that  you can add to your smash book. So no one was able to touch it , out of reach !
I have enjoyed these books so much or just the concept of it. However, the pretty book with pretty cool pages with the prompts on them really helps get your mind in the creative track. Of course there are other ways to do this kind of journaling art with out the smash books. They are called all kinds of things. I did do a previous post a month or so ago about visual art journaling . So the different names I've heard them being called is, art journal,visual journal,homemade journals, cereal box journals, glue books, duct tape binders, and so on.I think they would make a great gift for your artsy friends and family members.