Dog Days Are Over - Wendy's Mini Accordian Puppy Album

Mini Accordion Puppy Album

How wonderful would it be to make a special mini accordion album to store your precious photos of your beloved dog in? I think it would be pretty cool, indeed!

In this day and age of technology, people are forgetting how cherished an actual hands on picture of someone, something and even our pet dog can feel.

Today, I decided to make a mini accordion style album, a place where you can store and proudly show off your family loved pet dog...

What I used:

*Graphic 45 Chipboard sheets

*Echo Park I Love My Dog Collection

*Echo Park I Love My Dog Coordinating Paper Pack

*Sew Easy Fancy Floss (for tie closure)

* A Brad

*Doublesided tape and a wet glue

* An awl or something to poke a hole in cover with.

The Cover

Cut two pieces of the chipboard at 5 by 5 inches and one piece at 5 by 1 inch. This is the cover for the album. To cover the base, I used the reverse side of the 3x4 journaling card sheet of paper. This was cut at 7 inches and leaving it 12 inches wide.

When placing the chipboard on the patterned paper leave about an 1/8th of an inch space between each side of the spine.

I glued the chipboard on with double-sided tap as well as a little wet glue. Then cut the corners off diagonally. Then I used a stylus to score along each side of the chipboard to make an easier fold of the flaps. Then I used a wet  glue to glue each side down.

I grabbed the red corordinating coloured paper and layed it on the inside of the cover and marked off the places where I had to cut it down, so it would fit nicely on the inside. I used double sided tape with some wet glue to adhere the inside cover on. When it was dry, I gently scored down each side of the spine to make the papers bend easier.

The Pages

For my pages (there are a few) I used some black cardstock from my own supplies. I cut the black cardstock at 9 3/4inches for the width and cut the height at 4 3/4 inches. You will need to cut five pieces of black cardstock for the pages. 

I then scored the width side at 4 3/4 and 5 inches. This gives you a 1/4 of an inche spine in the pages.

Putting the pages together, you alternate the spines. So if you start with a spine on the left side, your next page spine will be on the right hand side and then the next on the left hand side...alternating the spine. This is when you decide if you want to add pockets to your pages before gluing them. You can add a pocket at the top or on the side. I chose to add a pocket at the top so I only glued down both sides and at the bottom of my pages. This gives me a nice big pocket at the top where I can add a large mat for a photo.

When my 5 pages were all glued together. I cut out 10 mats from The Echo Park I Love My Dog Collection and 2 mats from the corordinating paper pack to decorate the black pages. These mats were cut at 4 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches and attached to each black page with double sided tape.

Before I attached my accordion pages to the cover. I poked a hole in the middle of the back cover near the spine. I used a brad and tied a length of the Sew Easy Fancy Floss on to it and pushed the brad through the hole. I placed a small piece of tape over the spikey bits of the brad just to protect the cover paper a little. This gives you a novel tie closure on the album.

I then attached my pages to the inside bottom cover with some double sided tape and wet glue. I glued another mat over this inside cover.

Time to Decorate:

I used two of the 3 by 4 journaling cards from the I Love My Dog collection, placing one on the inside front and one on the inside back.

I made four photo mats to go into the pockets. These were cut at 4 1/4 from the back cardstock and rounded the corners of each. I then cut 4 more in the plain coloured coordinating papers at 4 inches by 4 inches and rounded the corners. And glued the coloured mats onto the black mats. The mats fit in the pocket nice and snug.

mats in pockets

I decorated the front of my mini album with another 6x4 quote image from the Echo Park I Love My Dog Collection and backed it on to some black cardstock.

Some pictures of the pages with the beautiful coloured patterns.

I absolutely love the end result of my mini accordion album and hope to gather some dog pictures from our Crafty Vera and Friends Family to add to it to make it complete.

You can view the whole process below :

Let me know if you make one for your family dog in our facebook group, I'd love to see it!

Don't forget the items and papers I used are discounted for the month of March
at Aunty Vera Scrap and Crafts  online store.
You all have a good doggy day!
Wendy xox