Tattered Time Mini-Album Part 3–Pouches

Having watched Laura Denison’s video on making envelope pouches, I decided to have a go today. As usual, I ran into the constant problem of UK stuff being different from US stuff. They have long narrow business envelopes which are that bit longer than ours, so they make a better proportioned pouch. Anyway, nothing daunted, I took one of our long narrow envelopes and made a start on a pouch.

I then decided to start designing some to cut from cardstock, and made a larger, single pouch. Here is what I did.

The one on the right was distressed with Black Soot Distress Ink, but it took quite a lot of work to get it as black as this, and in the end I thought it would be much more straightforward to do what I have done on the paper bags for the pages of my album, and paint them with black acrylic paint, so this is what I did on the larger pouch on the left.

The one on the right is a sealed business envelope with the ends slit open, and folded, so that there are two openings at the top. The next step would be to create a smaller pouch at right angles, to go between the two layers, and then to glue the two layers together. I cut the semi-circles with my 2 inch circle punch, just through the top layer in each case. I think this semi-circle is too large, and today I decided to get a 3/4 in circle punch for this purpose. You would not believe how long it took me to find one here in the UK! There were some available from the US but with such a heavy postage rate that they weren’t worth considering. In the end I found one on Amazon.co.uk but it was a bit more expensive than I’d hoped, but by then I was fed up with searching, and went ahead and ordered it!

Before gluing the folded envelope pouch, decorative papers can be matted onto the various surfaces. The single pouch would have decorative papers matted onto the front and back, and possibly inside the back, at least part way down, to cover the join in the back, and the black paint. The semi-circles would then be cut again through these papers where appropriate, with the same circle punch. Laura says it’s best to do one layer at a time because sometimes the punches won’t cut through two layers of paper at a time. Turning the punch upside down, it’s easy to eyeball where to cut. On my pouches, I did mark the centre line so I could line up my punch and get the semi-circle centred. When they are complete, you make tags, photo mats or journaling pieces to slip inside the pouches, and the pouches can either be attached to your page, or slotted into any pockets you may have created on the page.

This is the template I designed for the larger, single pouch, which measures 5 3/4 x 7 in when finished.

This template, in pdf and jpg formats, is on my Skydrive ready for free download. I am hoping to add further templates in the future. Having made this very basic one, I am keen to try making some more complicated ones, and also some tag templates too.

Not too much achieved today on my album pages, but I’ve spent so much time online trying to find punches etc.! We were out for the evening and there was ironing to be done too. Ah well.