Serendipity

SERENDIPITY

: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for; also : an instance of this

Merriam-Webster online

Before I go on, I want to mention a new feature on M-W. When you look up a word, you have the option of posting why you were looking up that particular word. Very interesting to see why people are using the dictionary.

Night before last a friend e-mailed me and asked if I could send her the instructions for making a photo album I had sent her a couple years ago. 

I had forgotten all about these and the files on them had been lost when my computer crashed but I did have one made-up album in my stash. Great opportunity to redesign it. Since this was based on an antique album I had at one time, thought it would be quite appropriate in the parlour.

Once the pages were designed in a Word document, they were printed on a sheet of lighter weight cardstock. For this particular album I found a wallpaper with a very tiny floral design at Jennifer's printables. It was actually blue but with a bit of experimentation I was able to recolour it pink. Then I printed it on  the reverse side of the page with the album pages.

Each page contains the strips to make three albums so I scored all the vertical lines between each album page then cut the strips out.

Next I cut all the shapes out of the pages. To get started I cut an X in the middle of the shape to get started then use manicure scissors to cut out the shape. The trick here is to hold your scissors in position and move the paper as you cut.

Here gold trim has been added around the cutouts with a fine tip gold Pilot marker.

I put a selection of pictures of our grandchildren into a word document, resized them to fit in the album and printed the page on a sheet of regular paper. (Photo paper would be too thick.) The pictures were then cut out and pasted in place behind the cutouts.

(If you're making the album as a gift, you can just skip this part. But if you're making it for yourself or have pictures you can add to the gift album, adding the pictures at this point is WAY easier than adding them after the album is put together.)

 Here the second and third pages from each end have been glued together then the bottom of each set of pages containing pictures is glued together.

 (Optional) At this point I ran my chisel point gold Pilot pen around the edges of all the pages. (You can use the fine point here but the chisel point is much faster and neater. Our local Staples carries only the fine point in the store but they do carry the chisel point online.)

Both sets of pages are put together (make sure both sets are pointed in the same direction - one of those 'don't ask why I mention this' warnings LOL) and held in a binder clip with the spine edge showing:

 Give the spine a generous coating of white glue (Weldbond or Aleene's Tacky) and go make breakfast or play a few games of Free Cell. Let the glue dry!

I like to use the red velvet Christmas ribbon that has a gold backing for the cover but if you don't have it, any of the velvet ribbons will do. I have some dark green that will be nice. If you don't have the gold backed, you could probably paint around the edge of the back of the ribbon with your gold marker. I cut a piece 2 5/8" x 1 1/8" which gave me a 1/8" bit of gold showing around the entire border of the album.

Because the ribbon is quite stiff, I got out the fabric folding pen I bought yesterday and on the fabric side of the ribbon ran two vertical rows where the spine would be placed and creased them. It helped.

Glued the front and back pages to the cover (leave the spine loose). If you like, you can add a jewellery finding, a piece of a gold doily or a piece of lace (anything that strikes your fancy) to the front of the album.