I know, that is NOT how the song goes but my family took a fabulous summer trip out to Arizona two years ago this coming weekend and I miss it! We had a blast! This year we are planning on Lake Tahoe and Yosemite so before I make more memories (and take more pictures) I figured it was best that I get that trip to Arizona chronicled and scrapped.
Did you know that Clear Scraps offers custom Word Albums with any word you want?! Amazing! I love when customization is an option and Clear Scraps' Custom Word Albums are affordable to create on top of that. They're called “Clearly My Acrylic Word Albums” and can be up to 8 letters long. How about that?!
I ordered “Arizona” of course, and created a mini book all about our trip. Over 3 days we took well over 2000 photos. What can I say, I am a scrapbooker! Smile! So with all those photos, even 9 pages of acrylic happiness was not enough space for all the photos I wanted to include. I devised a way to add more pages to the book using basic 4×6 page protectors. It's so easy and my book lies nice and flat – no “alligator” effect on this mini. P.S. The alligator effect is when the pages of a book fan out like an alligator mouth because the book is too fat from extra pages or bulky embellies.
The first thing I did was trace each letter onto patterned paper and cut them out. I adhered some letters to the front of the pages and some the backs. I used stickers, buttons, and stamped images to cover any adhesive that might show through from the back side of the paper through the acrylic. Then I added my photos and even more embellishments. The beauty of using acrylic is that you don't need a ton of paper — I wanted that clear, see-through effect of the mini so there was no reason to cover each page with paper. I actually used scraps on this book from 3 different pieces of paper leftover from another project. Decorations = free!
After adding in my photos to the pages, I realized I had alot more to share. I punched larger holes with a Crop A Dile in some American Crafts 4×6 Page Protectors I picked up a while back.
The spacing between the holes matched the holes in the Clearly My Acrylic Word Album perfectly. These holes are standard in most Clear Scraps albums so just think of the possibilities–you can always adding a couple page protectors to your next Clear Scraps project to get alot of projects in that mini without making have a a gaping alligator mouth.
After the book was nearly complete, I stamped some of the acrylic with postmark and travel stamps using Staz-On inks. I distressed the edges of all of the pages with Staz-On in Black. I added a coulpe of crumpled, stamped tags to the binding among the ribbons and made a chipboard sticker from the paper collection into a tag for the binding as well. Here are a few more photos of the inner pages:
I really enjoyed working with this custom album. It was so much fun! I ended up giving the book to my dad for Father's Day. He and my mom were always admiring a book I made of the same Arizona trip for my sister and as I was creating this one, I knew he would love it. The first thing they commented on was what a unique book it was and how they had never seen anything like it! And that means alot coming from the parents of a crazy scrapbooker like myself.
Supplies:
Clearly My Acrylic Word Album – Clear Scraps
Paper, Stickers, Diecuts – Cosmo Cricket
Alpha Stickers – My Little Shoebox
Buttons – hydrangeahippo.etsy.com, American Crafts (orange)
Ribbons- May Arts (yellow), Bo Bunny Press (teal), Maya Road (silver ruffle), hydrangeahippo.etsy.com (black/silver stripe, black/white stripe, orange twine), other
Shipping Tags – Abvery
Ink – Clearsnap, Tsukinenko
Page Protectors – American Crafts
Stamps – Cat's Life Press, Close to My Heart, Crafty Secrets, Scenic Route
Posted by Jennifer Priest
Super cute & very cool!