My resolutions for 2010....documented within an acrylic mini-album..
Acrylic Mini-Album
Instructions:
There are different types of acrylic or other translucent materials. In this case, I just got some thick transparency at a hardware store in A3 size and cut down the number of pieces I needed to 6x6 inches with a guillotine paper trimmer, which worked great.
Then you have all of your pieces laying in front of you that you need. After that I wanted to vary the pages a bit. So, what I did was to cut various pages into shapes, but using a template I made from a Making Memories journaling pad. I used a permanent marker to trace the edge of the journaling page and then just cut it out. Since it was going to be covered anyway, the marker would be covered up. If you like you can ink the edges with staz-on ink or with acrylic paint in case you don't want to cover it with paper.Generally, with acrylic albums, you're doing to want to plan out the pages carefully, maybe even with a sketch as you'll want to cover front an back pages equally, so as not to have adhesive, or the back of other paper or embellishments showing through the page. Sometimes, it's a good idea to use double sided paper and then you can cover any bits of adhesive with embellishments. At any rate, plan ahead so you don't run into problems there.
After cutting some of the pages into shapes, I also stamped some of the pages with stay-on ink as well for a variation in the background. Staz-on is the BEST!
Two holes are sufficient to hold the album together. I made sure to put in the holes before I started designing the album to make sure I don't cover up anywhere where I wanted the holes to be. You can use jump rings or ribbon or you can bind it with a regular binding system....whichever way you would like.
For the first time I used fabric in an album as a background. It looks as if it's sewn onto the album, but I just machine stitched a frame on the fabric and adhered with regular old tombow adhesive runner. This worked surprisingly well. After that I needed to see what to place on the back side. Every double spread is matching in color to prevent chaos for the eyes. :-) Generally, one page will contain a photo and the other some very important journaling.
On the page with my hubby and I, I stitched a heart on the other page before adhering the fabric, which I then also filled with buttons and pearls using gluedots. The key I adhered with fabric glue and the keyhole with diamond glaze, which is really almost as tough as super glue, yet acid-free. I left the back side of the heart, because I liked the way it looked on the other side.
As for my resolutions, I'm thinking that if I spent so much time with this album, I just might stick to them better. Who knows?
