Mini envelope album

I have always fancied having a go at making this type of album and finally this week I took the plunge. One of my work colleague is having a heart bypass and will have a while off work. This is the perfect opportunity for her to complete the album with her favourite photos. She loved it ! you'll have to excuse the quality of the pictures as the lighting was not very good but here it is...
The whole album was made from scratch. The cover is made out of recycled packaging and the pages are A5 brown paper envelopes bought from my local market.

The large flower is cut with a Tim Holtz die (tattered flowers) and inked to age it. The top pink flower is a shop bought paper flower. The smaller flower was stamped and embossed with gloss embossing powder in purple. Again the edges were inked to give it more depth. The metal label holder is from the Tim Holtz idea-ology range ("ornate plates" in pewter). The large flower die cut is from the Marianne Creatables range (Swirl Leaf LR0120). The scallopped circle is cut from a sizzix bigz die and embossed with the birds folder from cuttlebug.

The button are spares from one of my old jackets. I removed the shanks and stuck them with pva glue.

The butterfly is cut from a Mariane creatable die and covered in pva glue. Whilst the glue was still tacky I sprinkled some fine glitter on top. A bit fiddly but worth the effort don't you think?

The flower was stamped and then coloured in with promarker pens from the manga collection.

 

Sorry for the photos being sideways but blogger insists on rotating them for some reason... If anyone knows how to stop it from doing that pleaaaase let me know, it drives me crazy!

The frame is open at the top so a photo can be inserted inside.
The whole album was made from scratch from recycled cardboard and A5 envelopes.  The inside papers come from issue 73 of the Papercraft Essentials magazine I purchased a couple of weeks ago.  I love when I get papers as a freebie and couln't wait to use these!

Another birthday

The advantage of having young children is that you have plenty of opportunities for making cards and papercrafts.  With 3 kids I am forever making cards or jewellery to give for birthdays and so on.  My children have come to just expect me to be able to produce something on demand. They need it therefore I should oblige. This is my job as a mother, no question asked! Here is how I obliged on this occasion....

Here goes …

Hi everyone, this is my very first post and I am quite excited to be finally able to start my blog properly. I always let other things get in the way but this time I decided nothing would stop me and I am off… I’ll start by showing you a card I made for my daughters’ birthday last week.  I am quite a fan of Tim Holtz (let face it I want him to move in! can you imagine how much crafting fun you could have with that man…). Anyway I decided to use some of the die cuts I had ordered from ebay and here is the result:

The card is a pre-cut shape by craftwork cards, this is the large version. I then printed a digital paper from the digital freebie website and stamped over it with the "French Market" stamps from the Tim Holtz range. I used sizzix die cuts again from the Tim Holtz Alterations collection of bigz dies. This one is called "sewing room". I inked the edges of the card with distress ink (antique linen) and stamped the corners in lilac with some clear stamp from My Paper World - this one is Flowers and Butterflies. The two labels are stamped images from the Toga stamp collection which I purchased in France and the small "happy birthday" flower is a "Hero Art" stamp (I think, as I can't find the packaging for it!). That's it now why don't you have a go, I'd love to see your creations!