Mini-Photo Album and a Giveaway

One of my biggest pet peeves, and a large motivation in starting Frugal Crafters is how much plastic we're bombarded with that can't be or just isn't recycled. My biggest annoyance comes from the pharmaceutical industry. Now, I know that they want my pills to get to me undamaged, but I wish they'd give a thought to how much they're making me add to landfill. 

I used to be on monthly birth control pills, the kind that come in a plastic case with a dial in the middle. The pills themselves came in a foil pack that could be snapped in and removed when it was done. Yet, I was given a new pink plastic case almost every single month. Sometimes I was able to give it back to the pharmacist successfully, but if they had placed the prescription sticker on the plastic, they made me take it even though they could've easily removed the sticker and put it on the foil pack like they did other times.

And so years passed and I threw away a lot of plastic and my doctor put me on the pills where you get your period only 4 times a year. They come in cases with 3 months of pills. They look like this:

To me it looked like a little book. So when I finished up one case, I turned it into a little photo album. 

I made a photo album from my birth control pill case.

Oh, yes I did.

First, a closer look at  the pages.

So one side could have a picture slid into it and the other side had some flat spots where I could glue a picture. Add the inside front and back covers, and that means 8 pictures.

I popped out the foil packs and threw them away. I also gave the case a good cleaning since it had been sitting on my bathroom sink for 3 months.

Next, the pictures. I decided to use some photos of food from my honeymoon. My husband and I roll that way--looking at these pictures makes us sigh with the memories.  Besides, my mom didn't go to all the trouble of finding the perfect mother-of-the-bride dress just to have a photo of her wearing it end up inside a former birth control pill case. 

After selecting the pictures, I edited them online at picnik.com. I cropped them and re-sized them. To figure out the correct size, I went to auctionrepair.com to see how many pixels big my picture should be to print out the correct dimensions. (I used the default option of 75 dpi on the page when converting.)

I pasted the pictures into an MS Word document, so that I could get as many on each page as possible to minimize the amount of wasted photo paper.

I printed, trimmed and either popped or glued the photos in place. The glue soaked through the photo paper I used, so I'd suggest using double-sided tape instead.

Ta-dah!





And now the giveaway. I have another empty case ready to be turned into another photo album and I'll be sending it to one lucky winner. Just leave a comment to enter. I'll draw a name on Wednesday, November 19 at noon, EST. 

You could make a fun little album for yourself, or how about a photo album for a child with pictures of relatives? Or an ABC book or counting book for a child? Any other suggestions?