Mini Accordion Album

For an Our Daily Bread Designs challenge last week I made the cover for a mini album that I was making. You can read about the cover here. As I said in the other post I watched this video for inspiration and to get an idea on how to make the album (never having attempted one before)! In the video she uses envelopes, but I didn't have any the right size, so I made my own.

My finished album has covers that are 5" square. My envelopes are 9" x 4.5" and open at both ends. I made 5 envelopes for my album (but you could make your album larger (or smaller) by using more or less envelopes). 

To make each envelope I cut two pieces of DP - one was 9" x 4.5" and the other was 9" x 5" (this allows for a 1/4" "turn down" to stick the other DP to). So for 5 envelopes you need 5 pieces of DP cut to 9" x 4.5" and 5 pieces of DP cut to 9" x 5". I turned down the top and bottom (long sides) by 1/4" on each of the larger pieces. Added some double sided tape and then stuck down the smaller pieces to make my 5 envelopes. I then folded each of the envelopes in half and glued them together (with triple tac glue) using the pattern below.

Excuse my terrible paint skills - but this is just to show the pattern for the envelopes. The black lines are the front and back cover. Each coloured line is a different envelope.

I wanted to put little pull-out pages inside the envelopes so I used my Carl Craft CP-2 7/8" circle to punch semi circles in the centre of each end of the envelopes to enable the pull-out pages to be "pulled" out. It would probably make more sense to punch them before you glue them together - but I didn't have much trouble punching them after they'd been glued.

I then used double sided tape to attach DP and my photos to each "side" - 10 in total. And used my Copic 0.5 mm black multiliner to tell our story.

For the pull out pages I cut Bazzill textured card to about 4.25" x 4.25" (I made 10 pages). I die cut some tabs using the Tim Holtz Alterations Tiny Tabs and Tags Sizzix die. I glued one of these to one edge of each page before attaching DP (cut to 4" square) to each side of the page. And then added my photos and words (to both sides). (The edges of just about everything has been inked in Distress Ink Walnut Stain.)

This is one side of one of my pages. You can see the diecut tab at the bottom and one that is attached on the left side of the page. (Please excuse the "blocks" of colour in some of my photos - just wanted to protect my girls' names and birthday's etc.)

Once I was happy with the envelopes and pull-out pages, I attached the front and back cover. One thing I am most annoyed about is that I forgot to add the ribbons inbetween the envelopes and the front and back cover so you can tie it all shut! So I've had to add a ribbon that wraps around the whole album - not too bad but it would've looked much nicer with the ribbons at the top and bottom.

Here are a few more pictures:

As you can see from the photo above I have my tabs sticking out from the edge of the envelopes, even though they're in the semi-circles that I punched out. I wasn't originally going to add tabs, but when my husband tested pulling out the pages he couldn't do it (and this is going to my grandparents) so I thought adding the tabs would be a good idea. The tabs do stick out past the envelopes but they do not go over the edge of the "line" of the front and back cover - because my covers are larger than the folded envelopes, leaving about a 1/4" border. Hope that makes sense!

This is my back cover. The stamp is from Our Daily Bread Designs Swirly Bird. I've used Salty Ocean and Mowed Lawn Distress Ink over Grace Taylor Blossom DP.

This is the "larger" side of the album. You can see the tabs where the pull-out pages are. (Again, please excuse the "blocks" of colour - don't want all our personal info on the WWW!)

This is the "smaller" side of the album with one pull-out page partly "out".

Overall, I really like this type of album. Using the 5 envelopes (and the pull-out pages) you essentially have 30 "sides" to place photos and write anything you want. I think they make a great present and I'll definitely be making some more of these!

Thanks for stopping by!