If you're anything like me, you take what feels like a million photos during the holiday, and then don't do anything with them. This year I am determined to change that! This accordion fold mini album came together so fast and was a great way to use some of my favorite cardstock colors along with my assortment of random Christmas dies. Follow along to learn how to make your own!
Supplies:
- Cardstock Warehouse Cardstock Papers
- Claret
- Scarlet
- Vermillion
- Lockwood Green
- Forest Green
- Park Green
- Candy Pink
- Gold Mirror
- Scissors
- Bone Folder
- Paper cutter
- Assorted Christmas dies or embellishments of choice
- Scor-Tape
- Bearly Arts Glue
To start, cut each of your chosen papers down to 5.5 inches by 6 inches. These will be your base pages. Choose the order you want your pages to go in. You can use as many pages as you want, as long as you have an even number of pages. Once you have chosen your paper order, cut 1/2" off the last page to make it 5 inches by 6 inches. This will be your back cover.
Use a straight edge and a scoring tool to score the long edge of each paper at the 1/2 inch mark. This will create the tabs that you will attach your pages with. Do this on each page except your 5x6 back cover, which does not need a tab. (If you've never scored paper before, check out our Paper 101 Guide for proper scoring techniques.)
Starting with your first page, add a strip of Scor-Tape to the tab. We used Scor-Tape for this because it is very strong and will hold up for a long time. Attach the next sheet of paper to the tab. Continue this process on each tab until your entire book is assembled. When adding your adhesive, make sure you are checking that you are adding it to the right side to get an accordion effect. I folded mine up periodically to make sure I was on the right track. When you are finished, it should look like this...
Now it's time for the fun part, embellishing! I used the leftover sheets from making my book with some of my Christmas dies to create my embellishments, but you can use anything you have on hand. I also cut a 3.25 inch by 4.25 inch rectangle out of each of my paper colors, and then cut one Gold Mirror piece of the same size for each page. These will be used as photo mats for the book.
I wanted to make this book before I had pictures ready for it, so I used the photo mats to build an album where the photos can be added later. I chose a photo mat color for each page, added my chosen embellishments, and then added in the gold mirror mat.
Once I was sure which embellishments I wanted where, I started to glue things down. I used Scor-Tape to attach the mats to the pages, and then used my Bearly Arts Precision Glue to glue on all the embellishments. If you are adding photos later, make sure you do not put glue on the parts of the embellishments that will overlap the photos. I just glued around those areas to make sure everything was secure.
To create my cover, I cut some words and a large Christmas tree out of my scraps. I kept this pretty simple since I plan to display the book unfolded on a shelf.
When you are ready to put in your photos, simply add 3 inch by 4 inch photos on top of the mats you created. (This size is half of a 4x6 picture. I print mine side by side on 4x6 photo paper.) And there you have it! These albums are great to display around your home for the holiday, or gift to people you love.
More of a visual learner? You can watch the assembly process on our YouTube below! Make sure to "like" and "subscribe" so you don't miss out on our future videos!
What are you crafting for the holidays? We would love to see! Be sure to share it with us on Facebook and Instagram. Tag your crafty creations with #cardstockwarehouse to be featured on our page.
Happy Crafting!
Erica
1 comment
Love this so much!