Altered Album and Card Fronts

On Sunday, I found these old unused photo albums for a $1 each at a garage sale. I bought them with the intention of altering them. As you can see, the design of the covers are not very pretty but I saw potential for these photo albums.

I altered one of the old photo albums and created a "Scrappy Card" Album that I'm using to store my card fronts.

The photo album is a tall one. . .14 inches tall. A few months ago, my local Michaels was getting rid of rolls of designer paper by EK Success that were the length of wrapping paper. I strolled by the "clearance" section and they were selling them for a $1.25 each. The rolls had 4 different designs and were double sided. At regular price, they were $8.99 each. The size of each paper are 24 x 36". I bought a whole bunch of them not knowing what I was going to do with them. Well. . .I must say I was a very savvy, smart shopper. The papers are FABULOUS and they are very good quality papers.

I was able to alter this album which typically a 12x12" designer paper could not cover completely, but with the large papers that I bought, I was able to cover the album completely.

The flower, titles, and swirl design were all created using my Craft Robo die cut machine. I even designed the flower myself using Adobe Illustrator. I love the Craft Robo for this reason. I can create my own die cuts. For those who are not familiar with the Craft Robo. . .basically, it's the Xyron "Wishblade". They're the same machine. . .Craft Robo is the European version and the Wishblade is US version.

Although there's a huge learning curve with this machine, I feel it's worth the money and better than the Cricut. The only drawback is that if you are not computer savvy, you may be limited with what you can do with the cutter.

I lined the inside of the photo album with the same designer paper. Rather than inserting pictures in the pockets, I'm using them to store my card fronts.

What are card fronts? For those who don't know what they are. . .card fronts are just the front design of the card which are not attached to a card base.

Basically, you'd design a 4 x 5.25" cardstock like you would a regular card. Many times, this is a good way to share a card idea or technique that you want to share with someone or to create a design of a card that you can store without the bulk of a full card and later attach to a card base when you are ready to send it out.

Here are card fronts I made with scraps of designer paper. I stored the card fronts into my "Scrappy Cards Album" above. When I make enough of them I'll create labels and organize them in categories such as Birthday, All Occasion, Get Well, etc. When I want to send a card to someone, I'll attach it to a card base.

Another card using strips of scrap designer paper. Mixing and matching your scraps and creating a card is a great way to reduce your scrap pile.

A whole bunch of scraps were used for this card. It was fun putting the different elements together. My goal this week is to reduce my small pieces of scrapbook paper and miscellaneous embellishments.