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             Flore’s Souvenirs Mini Album

Materials

• 2 squares of cardboard, 9 x 9c, and 1.5cm thick

• 4 pieces of grey cardstock 9 x 9cm

• White paper, either watercolour paper or graph paper

  • 1 piece 80 x 8cm (you will have to stick a few pieces together to get the right length)

  • I piece 8 x 8cm

  • 5 pieces 6.5 x 6.5 cm

  • 4 pieces 7.5 x 7.5cm

• 5 pieces of patterned paper 7.5 x 7.5cm (Fee du Scrap, Kesi’art)

• Pennant shaped cut-outs 2.5 x 5cm and 1.5 x 3cm

• Red, grey and white cardstock for making cut-outs

• 9 photos, 7.5 x 7.5cm

• 8 metal corners

• Badge (Lime Citron)

• Dies cutting dies (Florilèges Design, Kesi’art)

• Clear stamps (Florilèges Design, Lime Citron, Kesi'art, Cartoscrap, Custom and Craft, Denim

• Ink stamps (Tim Holtz)

• Wooden stamps (Florilèges Design, Kesi’art)

• Liquid inks (Kesi’art, Distress Rnager, Colorex)

• Indian ink

• Ink pads (Versafine, Aladine, Versamark)

• Stabilo felt tipped pen 68

• Embossing powder (Artemio)

• Bulldog clip (Zibuline)

• Metal chain and star (Ephemeria)

• Heat gun, Crop-A-Dile hole puncher and metal eyelets

Instructions

Start with the long piece of paper and fold it up like an accordion, in 8 x 8cm squares. Some of the pages are made by working with ink and adding some cut-outs and other elements, while others just consist of squares of white paper with embossed ink stamps. The instructions below for making these pages can be repeated for several of the pages in the album.

Making the covers

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Glue the squares of grey cardstock to the fronts and backs of both of your squares of thick cardboard.

Take a piece of white paper 8cm squared and put some ink on it by first mixing some drops of liquid ink and water on a piece of acetate and then pressing this onto your paper. Put on each colour one after another, leaving them to dry in between. You can do the same with ink from your Stabilo felt pen, by scribbling it on the acetate and adding some drops of water. Blot the ink regularly with absorbent paper as you work.

When the ink is all dry add some ink stamps using the same colours. Use background stamps, text and stamps in the shape of splashes.

Use your sewing machine to sew a line of stitches all the way around the edge of your square of paper.

Next arrange all of your decorative elements on top of your piece of paper. I put on two pennant-shaped cut-outs, glued together, an embossed heart and other cut-outs and stamps. Attach these and then clip on a small bulldog clip to give the impression that it is holding everything together. Then attach the decorated square of paper to your cover using thick sticky foam.

Add some dots and make some little splashes with Indian ink and/or white Colorex. To do this, take a small pot and a fine-tipped paintbrush. Soak the tip of the paintbrush in the pot and bring it right to the place where you want it on the page so that you don’t accidentally make any splashes in places where they aren’t wanted. It’s a good tip for working with the ‘patouille’ style.

On the back cover add some small dots and stamps but nothing more. Then glue your accordion of paper onto the front cover and add metal corners to the cover.

For One of the Pages

Take a piece of white paper measuring 6.5 x 6.5cm and add ink and ink stamps in the same way as you did for the cover. Then add the decorations that you want such as die cut shapes, an embossed heart, cut out ink stamps and perhaps also a twist of sewing thread.

Stick all of the decorations on one by one and then staple them together so that the staples add an additional decorative element. You can add some extra decorations on top of this to make it more three dimensional. Mount this onto a square of patterned paper and then glue it into the album on one of your concertina pages. Finish off your page by adding some dots of Indian ink or white Colorex. Alternatively, if you don’t have any white Colorex try using white gesso diluted with a little water.

You should make five of your pages like this. Then make another four pages with white pieces of paper 7.5cm square to which you should just add a black ink stamp and a shape or image embossed in red.

Putting together the Album

Glue all of the squares you have prepared into your album alternating a photo, then one of the more simple ink stamped pages, then one of the decorated pages. Finally glue the back cover to your accordion and add metal corners. You could also add a little bit of thick twine to tie the album together.

Congratulations, your mini album is finished!