Travel Album - Handmade Gift
Last Christmas they went on holiday to Europe and I told them I'd do their photo album up for them on their return....... well...... It was August and I still didn't have any photo's to scrapbook so I decided the best thing I could do was make up the albums and then give them to them for them to add the photos when they have time to print them.
This first tin is a CD tin to hold the CD's of their photos' for future save keeping.
This little case is to hold all the memorabillia from their trip like coins and notes etc.....
And these are the albums. I had them cut out of thick chipboard in the shape of a suitcase and then bound them so the albums are original and colour co-ordinated. I had a ball with this one. I chose papers that were beige, brown, pink and khaki toned in a variety of patterns.... very unusual for me to mix so many colours and so many patterns. But I think it came out o.k. I especially loved using all the stamps in my new Autumn Leaves set. If you look at the tittles of each album you'll notice I ran out of stickers so I cut out the surrounds of some stickers so I had a uniform pattern. I like doing this to make a sheet of stickers go further.
This is the inside cover of one of the albums. If you look at the little envelopes with the little cards poking out of them on the left you'll notice they're handmade cards. I purchased four of these in a set for $3.95 and thought they'd make a great place for them to write their favourite memory of the holiday and close the envelope up. Then in a few years time they can open the envelope again and see what they wrote. 
I also included acestate pages with travel captions for some interest. (These were very cheap! They were on special at my local Crazy Clarks for $2 for a pack of six 12 x 12 sheets..... always have your eyes peeled for a bargain and have your emergency payment stash of money on hand).
Underneath the acetate page is the journalling page for this section of the journey. I tied all the pages of the album together with a common stamping theme and inked and rounded edges. I did make a boo boo with the journalling pages. When I made them I had the page for Paris stamped with a big "P" but then when I put it all together I stuffed up. So as my LSS is closed on Mondays I wasn't able to go back and undo the binding and redo it..... So I stamped all the pages the same. Then I chose an intricate swirly font stamp set that I bought for $3.95 and stamped the right location with that. (It actually looks better). I know when I was putting this together at the LSS the lady was a bit horrified at my slap dash attitude to the binding and putting together process. I don't tend to stress so much though cause experience has taught me that my "fix" for whatever mistake I make is usually better than my original product. Oh what a relief to be a problem solver.
This photo was taken before I fixed my mistake.
Here's a photo of the new page 'fixed'! (lol)
This is a zoomed in photo of the stamping on this page it says Venice and Italy... the flash dragged a bit of the intensity out of it but you get the idea.
This is an examaple of what some of the pages look like on the inside.... and again there's a mistake can you see what it is? I have fixed it so don't worry.
I'm hoping to give it to them today. (Just waiting for an email to see if my cousin can come out to lunch. He's pretty busy these days as he works for our town's Water Supply and as we're in drought at the moment and dam levels had dropped to 19% .... they're back to 21% now after some recent rain..... well I don't know if he can spare the time for lunch but I'm hoping!)
Comments