Challenge Post #3

   I had all intentions of publishing this last night, but I was exhausted and decided it could wait until.....later! I have been endlessly working on 'thank you' notes from the wedding! Yesterday I was able to complete 25 of them, but I still have about 100 to go! Not to mention I need to finish making the rest of the wedding thank yous! My goal is to have most of them completed and sent before we leave next week for California. I think it's a reasonable goal, but hopefully my hand can take all the penmanship!

   Other than that things have been busy around here! The holidays are approaching faster than I can imagine, and I have yet to get my Halloween decorations out. Yikes! Ian has been really busy at work and has already put in 30 hours in the last two days. So we have not seen much of each other lately! I still have a lot of organizing and putting away to do around the house with post-wedding stuff, but I also need to winterize the outside, clean, get decorations out, finish applying to medical schools, and run some errands. Never a dull moment around here!

 Before I start in on my list of 'to-do', I will post lucky project number three! This has been one of my favorite projects this year! I love how it turned out, and I am planning on making a couple more for gifts around the holidays! The project is an accordion album/brag book for a baby! I made two of these a few months ago for a couple of my friends who were expecting this year. I will post pictures of both so you can compare the "boys" book to the "girls" one.

   First things first, I found these accordion album kits on clearance at Paper Source last Christmas. I had all intentions of using them for gifts last year, but I ran out of time to make anything else. This year was the year of babies, though, so I made sure I spent time making personalized gifts for each shower (7 in total!!!). The kit came with 2-5x7 chipboard covers and an accordion folded paper (about 9 panels on each side). I think they were on clearance because of the color. I don't mind it, though. It can be covered! 

This is the accordion paper laid out from the kit. Both albums started with this green color. First I used a brown distess ink to ink the edges and each crease (front and back). Then I cut my papers down to fit each panel and laid them out in the order I wanted them on each side (I utilized both sides of the album so the parents could fit more pictures overall). Surprise surprise...I used scraps and left over papers from other baby themed projects! Next I glued them all down using Rubber Cement! I like Rubber Cement when using thin papers like these.

This was what the boys album looked like after inking and gluing (you cannot see all the panels...it was very long).

The girls album after inking and gluing. Notice how you cannot see much of the green any more! I chose to glue separate papers to each panel rather than score a long piece of paper because I wanted it to fold nice and flat in the end.

Next, I inked the chipboard covers. One for each front and back. For the chipboard, I used Tim Holtz's Distress Stain because it was easier to get a deeper color. As you can also see, I also started going through some baby embellishments and phrases for the albums. What you see in the picture were left over from a bunch of die cuts off the Cricut that I ran through my Xyron to make into instant stickers!

On to embellishing while the covers dry. I used a variety of things, but I also wanted to leave room in case the parents wanted to add any personal touches. I used twine, homemade sticker embellishments (this one says "Handle with Care"), and popped embellishments for added dimension. I tried not to make too many pop-up embellishments because then the book would not close!

Diaper pin die cuts with some hand-drawn scribbles to connect the 3.

The girls album used a lot of the same type of embellishments, but with a different twist (this die cut says "gentle").

Dimension added behind the duck to make it pop off the border. Here you can also see the ribbon glue to the chipboard and underneath this last panel (more on this later...).

The front of the final projects! I did not take as many pictures putting the covers together, but I will try and explain what I did. After drying, I took the boys front cover and glued a paper I masked and misted using Mr. Huey's ink on the front using Zip Dry glue (works great on heavier paper). Then I glued the little tab at the top and stamped the phrase at the bottom using Memento jet black ink. For the girls front cover I misted the paper with Mr. Huey's then again using Mr. Huey's shine mist (to give it shimmer) then stamped the phrase on the bottom. While that dried, I attached a couple eyelets to a banner border using my Crop-a-Dile then glued it in place at the top (this way the eyelets did not have to go through the chipboard). When the ink was dry on the phrases, I used Glossy Accents to trace over the word miracle so it would stand out a little more and pop off the cover. The ribbon will be explained in the next photo. Cute, right?

The back of the final projects! For boys back cover, I popped the banner up after attaching the eyelets. I misted both papers on the back with Mr. Huey's mist and shine as well then added a rub-on to the boys and a sticker and tab to the girls. To attach the covers to the papers. I glued the backs on first. I needed to make sure the ribbon fastener was already glued, though, before I glued down the paper. I used glossy accents to glue the thin ribbon to the inside back covers. Then I used Zip Dry to glue the last page of the accordion book over top of the ribbon (this page I purposefully did not cover with a different piece of paper...it stayed green...so the green was glued to chipboard). For the front covers, I simply attached the first panel of the accordion book (also left green) to the inside front cover of the chipboard. Once it was dry, I tied the ribbon around the front panel and was done!

   What do you think? I was very excited to give these as gifts! They turned out so cute! It would be easy to make this without the kit, too. Cut down some chipboard to the size album you want to make (this happened to be 5x7). Then cut 7 inch strips of paper from a  12x12 sheet. Score the strips at 5 inches and fold accordion style. The "leftover" tab after scoring could be used to attach strips of panels together to make the book as long as you wanted (attach the 2 inch tab to the back of the next strip of scored paper)! Decorate, embellish, and KAPOOOW.....a cute album!

   If you have any questions, though, or need more explanation on something I did or materials I used, please leave me a comment! I would love to help! I hope you enjoyed project number three this week! Stay tuned tomorrow (hopefully...) for a few projects using vinyl! Until next time:

Here's to life, love, and creativity!