Suitcase mini album

Can you believe I have had this post in draft since May? I totally forgot about it! Anyway, I have to say, I just love how this project turned out. I wanted to make my grandson, Hunter, a mini with pictures from the time he spent with us last summer. We drove to MA to visit them and he came back with us. We stopped at Niagra Falls on the way home, went to the St. Louis Zoo, and he was here over the 4th of July. So we had tons of pictures. I won't show you the entire book but I'll show a few different things I did to make room for extra photos and lots of journaling that I am going to let him do.

This was made from the Briefcase Chipboard album that was in the Occasions mini. I only used two of the chipboard pieces from it. On the outside I used Creamy Caramel (retired) I crumpled the paper up a few times then smoothed it out just a little. I then took a sponge and lightly sponged over the entire piece with Close to Cocoa ink to highlight the wrinkles. Kind of gave it a worn leather look. I then covered the chipboard with the distressed paper for the outside. The inside is just covered with the 'regular' Creamy Caramel cardstock.

For the inside pages I wanted something a little thicker than cardstock but not as thick as the chipboard pieces so I took the cardboard that comes in the designer series paper and cut it to size. I sandwiched that in between two pieces of Creamy Caramel cardstock that I had put through the Big Shot with the texture plates. I inked the edges of this 'sandwich' with Close to Cocoa ink. I punched holes in it and placed eyelets in it to keep the pages from tearing out.

On a few of the pages I needed extra space for adding plenty of pictures so for the photo mat I made it twice as long as I needed it to, scored it down the middle, inked the edges and glued it down to the page. I only glued the edges on 3 sides to create a pocket for a tag. I used photo corner brads (don't know if that is what they are called) to keep the bottom of the page folded up. This allowed me to put 3 photos on this one page and have room for journaling.

I tried to make sure I used this same method of gluing the photo mat down on all of the pages. By only gluing 3 edges I always had somewhere to tuck a tag into for the journaling.

On another page I took a piece of Very Vanilla and cut it to size. I inked the edges of it and with my Cutting tool I perforated a slit in it about 1/2 inch from the edge and opened the slit up. When I glued the paper to the page I only glued down the very edges so that the middle stayed loose. I then made a tag that would fit into the slit, another place to hide the journaling.

I took these pictures before the album was complete and of course forgot to take more before I gave it to him. The closure was leather that I got from the BIA folks. Have to say I won't use it again. After the leather got loosened up from opening and closing a few times it became to soft to easily fit back into the clasp. I was very disappointed since there was no way to remove it without destroying the cover. Oh, well, you live and learn. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think!