Remember this project?
On the post of the original one I made, I said I wasn't going to post a tutorial for it because I didn't want to take away from the girl whose blog I had seen it on. She didn't post a tutorial, I just sort of figured it out from her pics, but I've seen this project several places since, so I don't really know who to give credit to for originating it. That being said, I've decided that since it's out there, anyway, I may as well share my version here. So, here we go:
Here's what you'll need:
- Two 3" x 12" strips of cardstock
- One 4" x 9" strip of designer paper
- Two 4" squares of designer paper
- One 3" x 4" strip of designer paper
- Two 4" square coasters
- Coordinating papers for embellishing pages
- Decoupage medium - Royal Coat, Mod Podge, etc. (not shown)
- Ribbon - two 18" pieces and two 8" pieces (not shown)
Score the 3" x 12" strips at 3", 6" and 9". Accordian-fold each one and set aside. These will become the pages for the album.
Using the decoupage medium, adhere a 4" square of designer paper to one side of each coaster.
Adhere the other side of the coasters to each end of the 4" x 9" strip.
Center your 3" strip over the gap and overlapping the coasters, and adhere.
Flip the whole thing over and run your bone folder along the edge of the coaster to "set" a crease. This will help your album open and close more easily. Set the covers aside to dry while you decorate the pages of your album.
Deocrate each panel of your accordian-folded strips, leaving the last panel blank on one strip, and the first panel blank on the other. On the opposite end of the strip, deocrate the end panels to match (as seen in the picture above). This is a view of the opposite sides of the completed strips:
The following pics give you a few ideas for decorating your pages, but you can do them however you want to!
Cut two 1 3/8" squares, and adhere them in opposingi corners of a 2 3/4" square.
Mat a 2 1/2" square with a 2 3/4" square.
Center a 2" x 2 3/4" strip on a 2 3/4" square.
Each of these squares is 1 1/2", set on the page just slightly inside the edge (so there is the same "border" as on the other pages), and with the corners overlapping slightly in the center.
Background square is 2 3/4", square turned on point is just a hair under 2".
Cut a 2 3/4" square from each of two designer papers, then cut them in half diagonally. Use one of the resulting triangles from each.
After all of your panels are decorated, fold them up into little "books", with the matching pages on top, and tie one of the 18" ribbons around each one.
Your coaster covers should be dry by now, so inspect them and carefully sand the edges of the paper even with the coasters, if necessary. Be especially careful where the gap between the coasters is, as this area is less reinforced and more fragile. If it's not perfect, you can ink the edges up (you may want to, anyway). Put adhesive on the back of one of the 8" ribbons, center it over the seam of the two papers on the cover and adhere. Repeat for the other side.
Wrap the ribbons to the inside and adhere in place.
Put adhesive on the back of each little book and place them in the center of the inside covers. Make sure that you have the edge with one fold and two free pages toward the inside of the album, and the edge with two folds toward the outside of the album. This is what it looks like all finished and fully open:
Now just add whatever embellishments you'd like to the front cover, and you're done!
That's it for this tutorial, but I also wanted to mention a new thing I've done to make it easier for you to find all of my tutorials. In the "More About This Blog" in the column on the left is a link titled "Tutorials" (duh!) that will take you to a list of all the tutorials I've done. Click on the title of the tutorial you want, and it will take you to the post for that tutorial. Right now the list is just in order from most recent to oldest but, when I have time, I'll rearrange it so it's alphabetical. I'm trying to make this blog as user-friendly as my limited techie knowledge will allow, ya know?
Okay - bedtime! It always takes me about a week to get used to the not-daylight-savings-time-anymore thing. I'll be draggin' in the meantime... As always, thank you so much for stopping by!
Great tutorial! I love how you have apicture to go with each step. I'm a very visual learner so this will be a fun project for me to try.
Posted by: Shellie G | November 02, 2008 at 09:12 PM
Sue, this is darling! You do such wonderful, detailed tutorials and very creative work -- I love coming here to see what you've been cookin' up! I've seen this type of book on other blogs, but never directions for how to, so I really appreciate your taking the time to do this for the rest of us (lazy) stampers (speaking for myself only, BTW). lol
Posted by: stampmonkey | November 03, 2008 at 08:37 PM
Excellent tutorial. Thanks for explaining everything in such detail.
Posted by: Cathy Peper | November 05, 2008 at 04:46 AM