Floral Mini-Album Pt 4 Working on Pages 2 and 3

Recently I made a new mini-album, about my mum who died in December. I was unable to publish anything about this until now because it is a present for her best friend, who sometimes visits my blog, and I wanted it to be a surprise for her. I wrote a series of blog posts as I did each stage of the project, so I didn’t forget what I did, and they will be published in sequence now the project is finished and has been given to our friend.

If you want to see the finished project, please click here.

I have been following some amazing Youtube videos by Jen, who I discovered the other day: https://www.youtube.com/user/jenofevedesigns

She makes and sells beautifully organised templates for downloading and printing, for making mini-albums of various sizes, and the videos show how she constructs them. I am adapting some of her ideas for this project, and think I may follow her example and create my own templates for future use, because when making mini-albums, you can spend a huge amount of time planning and measuring and adjusting, and if you had a standardised set of components that you could mix and match, this would be a huge advantage and would save a lot of time – you would know that the various pockets, tabs, envelopes etc. and their respective mats, would all fit perfectly. Finding her channel was a revelation to me.

I originally intended to use lace for the page I’m working on at the moment, but nothing I had seemed really suitable. I found myself wishing I’d got a border punch to produce a nice lacy effect, and then I remembered I’d got a multi-shaper punch which I hadn’t used for ages. It’s OK, but the pattern repeat is rather large for what I want, so I shall use it for now, and probably get myself a more suitable border punch before too long.

I cut a long narrow piece using the part of the punch for border punching, and trimmed it down to length, and scored and folded a tab at the top. This is the piece on the right in the above photo. On the left is the piece I cut off, which I am keeping for now as it might come in handy somewhere else in the album. The centre piece was produced using the punch as a corner punch, and then trimming the card down to size, to produce a useful lacy black mat for one of the pages.

Here is the strap being constructed. I have taped a magnet on the reverse of the top layer. The photo shows the straps for both copies of the album.

The inside of the flap on page 3. This shows the magnet at the left-hand edge, which will keep the flap closed, and the one in the middle is for the strap. These will be covered up by the Distress Oxide background piece.

The front of page 2 with the magnetic strap in place. The tab over the top attaching it to the page will be covered by the Distress Oxide sheet lining the inside.

This is the pocket for page 2 being constructed.

You can see the tabs for attaching it, with the double-sided tape in place. I distressed the edges of the green paper with Forest Moss Distress Ink.

In her fabulous Youtube videos, Jen has so many useful tips, and I used one of these on this pocket. You peel back a small amount of the backing on the double-sided tape at the bottom of the side tabs, fold them in, and then fold up the bottom tab so that it sticks to the exposed glue on the side tabs. This holds the bottom tab in place. You can then remove the backing paper and stick the pocket in place on the page. (Another useful tip she shares is that if you make a mistake – and I make plenty! – you can unstick things stuck down with double sided tape by heating it with a heat gun, which softens the glue, and you can then peel the pieces apart! I never knew that, and always regret how permanent double-sided tape is when you get it wrong. I have wasted quite a few things in the past because I thought my inaccurately placed pieces were beyond redemption.)

The pocket in place, with the magnetic strap folded down.

If I had thought about it more carefully, I would have put the magnet for the strap inside the pocket rather than behind the page, because as it is, it has to work through more layers of cardstock, but it seems to hold OK. That’s the trouble with projects like this – they tend to evolve as you go along, and it’s really hard to think ahead sufficiently!

Here is page 2 with the magnetic strap open.

This is the double-page spread of pages 2 and 3 with the page flaps closed.

You can see that I have used the oval black punched piece on page 3, simply sticking it down as a photo mat.

The inside of page 2, with the flap open, showing how I have used my Distress Oxide background pieces.

The double-page spread with the flaps open, revealing the Distress Oxide background pieces.

It’s coming along nicely. I’m getting very excited about this project!