PSC59 - Anything Goes - Christmas Album

At the Perfect Sentiments Challenge this week we'd like to see Anything Goes with Christmas. Create anything you want as long as it has a Christmas theme and Christmas sentiment.

Our sponsor is Shelly's Images who will provide a free digital image to a lucky participant. This will be our last challenge this year. We'll return January 2, 2013.

I discovered I had an overabundance of Christmas paper collections from the days I designed for our local scrapbook store that closed. So I made four different Christmas mini-albums, each one using paper from a different company. Here's one I made with Echo Park paper and stickers from several years ago. Most of my previous albums had been rather vintage, so I thought this paper might appeal to younger members of the family. (The others were made with Basic Grey "Eskimo Kisses," Graphic45, and DCWV "The First Noel" with scriptures on tags). The last two were sold at a church craft fair before I could take photos. See the one with Eskimo Kisses on tomorrow's post)

The cover: The cover is 6" x 6 3/8." Both covers have patterned paper adhered to black cardstock mounted on chipboard. The cover is larger to accomodate anything that "sticks out" like the tag on page 5. The inside pages are all 6" x 6" mounted only on heavy black cardstock. Making all of the patterned papers 1/8" smaller than 6" x 6" allows the black outline to show.

The inside pages all have pockets for photos, mats or cards for more photos, and tags for journaling. I made the pockets in a variety of ways, most of which are unattached on the inside edge, allowing smaller shapes to be used or larger photos to be inserted.

Pages 1 & 2: (Page 2 has a black doily attached to a journaling spot, together used as a pocket.)

pages 3 & 4

pages 5 & 6 (Page 5 has the background paper attached only on 3 sides to made a large pocket. I used a circle punch on the open side to make it more obvious. The back side of the cutout was attached to the black photo mat. The Christmas tree tag is on top of a flip-up card for photo/journaling.)

pages 7 & 8 (Page 8 has a snowflake embellishment that I made by cutting out the remaining outline of a snowflake sticker and mounting it on white cardstock, then on a red scalloped circle.)

pages 9 & 10 (Page 9 has a vertical pocket. Page 10 has a pocket/book that is fastened by sliding the word collage embellishment under the edge of a large button.

Here's the booklet opened. It was made from a sheet of 8.5" x 11" black cardstock in the landscape orientation that is scored at 3" on each side folded to the center and 3.5" from the bottom, then folded up. Stickers and a trim of patterned paper decorate the pockets of the book and the tags. The middle pocket is big enough for a 4.75" x 4.75" photo/journaling card.)

pages 11 & 12 (Page 11 has a ribbon pocket. I used 7/8" organdy ribbon attached on the back of the green dotted paper with sticky red tape before it was attached to the black book page. The two ribbons should meet in the center and any photos, tags, etc., should be large enough not to slip through the openings. This type of pocket allows you to put in the largest photo/tag because no space is taken up with the attachment of a pocket.)

 I found that it was easy to make 4 mini-albums at the same time, even though I used different paper collections.  I could follow the general pattern and it went faster knowing what size to cut. For example, I cut all of the page 1 pieces at the same time.

I hope this will help give ideas to anyone who wants to make a pocket mini-album. I'm sharing this album with the following challenges:
Anything But a Card #8 - Winter Holiday
Anything Goes Challenge Blog #82 - Traditional Christmas colors
Jingle Belles "A December to Remember" - Anything Holiday Goes
Unstampabelles #18 - Christmas, no stamping. I only used stickers, die cut tags, and patterned papers.
Use It Tuesday #45 - Christmas - paper pack and matching stickers are my hoarded supplies