What do you do when you need a birthday gift during a pandemic lockdown and amazon is being completely unreliable? What if the recipients are very close friends whom you know will appreciate something home made? What if you just happen to have a ton of craft supplies? If you’re still scratching your head, then you need to move along! Unless, of course your head is just itchy. If you know the answer (or you know me) then please continue…
If you are me, you pull out some supplies and thank your friend Donna for introducing you to an online tutorial for making easy mini albums using twine binding. You also thank her for turning you onto your new favorite YouTube Channel. Thank you, Donna. I’ve spent several hours with Lyric Lover Crafts over the past 2 weeks. Well, several hours watching her videos but we’re totally friends in my head!
Below is my first twine binding mini album made for my friend Tammy. She is a hunter, fisherman (fisherwoman?), loves the outdoors and is truly one of my favorite people on the planet. So Photoplay’s Lakeside by Becky Fleck was perfect for her book. I did have to fill in with a few sheets of cardstock and miscellaneous pattern paper. I used a few sheets of Chatterbox paper. Chatterbox was one of the first companies I fell in love with some 20 years ago when I first started scrapbooking. Yes, I still have paper from 20 years but I used it – so no judgement! The wood embellishments, leaf die cuts, twine, pinecone charms, lace trim and epoxy shapes on the inside pages are all from Stampin’ Up. The blue enamel dots on the cover were made with Nuvo’s Midnight Blue Crystal Drops. I also used Mahogany Powederpuff ink from Quick Quotes with Life Changing Blender brushes from Picket Fence Studio to ink the edges.
I should warn you that making these are addicting. Plus you can easily use up an entire paper pack which makes me feel less guilty about how much I’ve spent on craft supplies in the last few weeks…months…ok, years. This book is 6″ X 8″ so I only got one folded 12″ X 8″ page per 12″ X 12″ sheet. As you will see in my next post (to come) making the book 6″ X 6″ allowed me to get 2 pages out of one 12″ X 12″ sheet. The Lakeside book has 20 folded sheets making 80 pages. In the future I will make the spine smaller and put in less sheets. 80 is a lot to fill, unless it’s for a baby gift or wedding.
Another change I would suggest is how the pages were put in. You will see in the video, after the cover is made, the twine gets wrapped around the spine 20 times. Then each folded piece gets slid under a strand of twine on the inside. (This will make sense if you watch the video around 28:00.) Once you have a few pages in, it gets harder and harder to slide them in and pages can easily get ripped or bent. Next time I am going to try laying a page in then wrapping the twine over it, laying the next page, wrapping again and wrapping each page one by one. I will let you know how it turns out. In the meantime, here are some photos of the Lakeside book. Please check back tomorrow when I share a 6″ X 6″ twine bound book. Thanks for looking!
sweetinkspiration.com 