Mini album

My husband was out of town for 2 nights so I was able to stay up and scrap like I was away on a weekend crop! I decided to make this mini album for my second daughter. I will give it to her tomorrow since I will be staying at her place for the night before the big 10K race. I hope she doesn't view my blog before that and ruin the surprise! Oh well, if she does, she does. I tried to cut some chipboard ,4 inches x 4 inches, that I bought at Hobby Lobby with the deep cut blade but it would not cut it. It must have been too thick. I was using it at a depth of 6 with a multi-cut of 3. Later on I thought about it and maybe if I used a lesser depth and more multi-cut it would have worked. I will try it again and let you know. I decided to use a method of layering poster board to make a faux chipboard. I learned that from www.mypinkstamper.com so I am not taking the credit for the method. It works quite well. I used design studio to cut my paper to fit the posterboard cuts. I used the zutter 1/2 inch round-it-all. I sanded the edges and chalked every thing with a brown cats eye. I layered the front and back cover with 4 or 5 layers of posterboard. ( I really don't remember) Be sure to use a strong adhesive so they don't peal. I used the zutter bind-it-all to cut the binding holes. I needed bigger binding wire than 3/4 inch which is all I had. I went to the only 2 stores that I knew carried zutter products and they didn't have the 1 or 1 1/4 inch sizes. So I decided to go to a discount store, Ollies, and looked at the desk calendars and notebooks that had binding wires until I found one in the brass color that I wanted and at least 1 inch in diameter. I bought the desk calendar for $1.99, took it home and dismantled it and cut the desired number of loops that I needed to bind my album and it worked just fine!!!! I cut my album binding holes before I learned about the valuable tip of placing the spacing bar inside the area that you set your pages to cut. That would have moved the holes down just a bit and I guess that helps with the turning of the pages on smaller albums. Well, live and learn! It still is okay to turn. I tried to put pictures of her childhood moments that lead up to her current "family." I printed out the sepia pictures myself and I think the sepia just does something special to an album like this. My camera did not seem to capture the true soft beige, browns and blues of the paper that I used. Enjoy! I hope she likes it!