Photo Book

I took some time yesterday - when I should have been cleaning my house! - to make a little project I've been meaning to try. I have all these beautiful wallet-sized picture of my children but no place to store them in my purse. I don't really carry a wallet, I use my checkbook that has credit card slots, so I don't have any place to display my pictures. When I was cleaning my drawers I came upon the Page Protectors for the Bitty Board Book in the new SU! catalog (it has been in the mini catalogs at least twice also). I thought, now why can't I use those and make a little album?? This may have already been done by someone but I didn't even look so if someone else out there already did this, sorry!! :)

So, here's a photo of how I started. I took 2 chipboard coasters and cut them down to about 3 1/2" tall. The hard part was rounding the corners I cut off to match the other corners - I don't think there's an easy method, I just cut and sanded mine. I took the page protectors and cut some of the side off where the holes are - to about 3 1/4". I then marked the chipboard for 4 holes (you could do any number of holes) and used my Crop-a-Dile (now available from SU!!! Yea!) to punch the holes in the coasters and the page protectors.

I then just decorated my covers, inside and out, sanding the edges and covering them with a few coats of Modge Podge to protect them. I used the new DP from SU! in Soft Sky - isn't this color so pretty? I wasn't sure they could top Cool Caribbean but they did! :) The middle strip uses River Rock (which is so much prettier in person, it is a subtle gray-green, almost a softer celery) and Chocolate Chip. You can't see it in the picture but the top strip of the chocolate is paper pierced as well as each scallop.

Since I do not have Baroque Motifs, I used my Autumn Leaves Flourishes stamps that I won from Jen del Muro last month. It goes very well with the paper I used. The sentiment is one for a Clear G stamp set I won from Dianne. I love how this project turned out - simple, yet exactly what I needed. I bound the book together by using ribbon to weave a binder, this way I can take it apart easily and add more pages if needed. You could also use those silver rings from an office supply store but I didn't have any.

On the inside, I mounted my wallet photos on pieces of coordinating cardstock and again used my Flourishes stamps to make them coordinate.

That's about it! I hope you enjoy the book and if you have one already or make one yourself I'd love to see it! Have a great day and thanks for stopping in!