Friday, May 16, 2008

Embellishing the Stitched Spine Tabbed Album

I had such fun deciding how to embellish the front, spine, and inside pages of my stitched spine tabbed album. (See instructions for how to assemble the album in the blog post below.) The idea of putting the album's title on the spine pleased me, so I experimented with letter sizes, ending up with letters cut from Cricut's Zooballoo (ZB) cartridge at 3/4 inch from patterned paper (CTMH's Boom-Di-Ada paper and card stock). The letters are shadowed using hollyhock card stock, which matches some of the inside pages of the album. To help the eye distinguish between the words "On Our Lake" I put a dot of bling between each word. (The bling was from some Heidi Swap bling I had on hand, which matches the hollyhock colored card stock.)

On the album's cover, I cut a one-inch strip of the "rick-rack" patterned paper from the Boom-Di-Ada paper collection and adhered it to the right edge of the album cover. Next, I used coordinating CTMH fiber, wrapping it around the cover twice so that two strands of fiber show on the album front. Inside, the fibers are tied in a bow. This helps make the embellishment for the inside cover page, as well.

Using the Fabulous Finds (FF) cartridge with my Cricut, I cut Tab 4 at 2 1/4 inches Real Dial Size (RDS) to make the tab that goes on top of the tab on the album cover. It is cut from another patterned paper from Boom-Di-Ada, and the center is a solid coordinating card stock. I cut the tab in half so that it did not actually wrap around to the inside of the page. Using coordinating colored small brads, I attached them first before adhering the tab to the cover (I didn't want the brad's legs to show on the inside cover). The words "Good Times" are stamped inside the tab using Sweet Leaf ink from CTMH. The "Good Times" stamp is also from a CTMH stamp set.

The flower on the album front is Accent 46 from the Accent Essentials (AE) cartridge cut at 3 inches Real Di
al Size (RDS), from patterned paper. It is backed with the yellow from the Boom-Di-Ada collection. In the center I used a patterned chipboard flower from Prima with the CTMH fiber tied through the button holes. I used the center part of the Accent 46 cut to make the little flower that is on the "vine" and put a dot of bing in the flower's center. The two "vines" are Accent 20 (using the shift key) cut at 2 inches RDS.

Decorate your tabbed album pages with the remaining patterned paper and card stock to suit your pics and journaling. Here
's a pic of the inside cover and first page of my tabbed album: I used the Spiral from Accent Essentials (cut at two inches RDS) on the corner of the top left picture on the left page. The waves on the bottom of the page are from the Going Places cartridge and are cut at 2 inches RDS.

I'd totally love to see your creations so please share your tabbed album by sending us pics (scrapspirit@hughes.net).