Seattle Mini Album

I'm on a big mini album kick and wanted to make a little one documenting my short trip to Seattle in October. I had the idea of putting together my own album instead of using a pre-made one. I had purchased some letterpress greeting cards from Pike Street Press and had the idea to use one of them as the cover for my album and tuck everything inside. I am addicted to buying greeting cards, especially letterpress ones, everywhere I go and I'm gald to be using up one that I'd normally just save to admire.

I knew the album would be a little bit thick, so I scored the inside of the greeting card to create a spine. If I was going to do this again (which I definitely will be sometime!) I would wait until the very end to score the card. The guts of my album ended up being really thick and bigger than the spine I created. But, lesson learned. I also ended up lining the inside of the greeting card with patterned paper so that the back flap was how the same size as the front (since I'd taken away some of the length by creating the spine.)

My idea was for the guts of the album to be a combination of 4x6 photos, memorabilia, Instax photos, and Gossamer Blue's Gramercy Road products. I like have a mix of good stuff and I absolutely love how it turned out! Now here comes one million phtoos of some of the inside of the album:

The Gramercy Road line is gorgeous. I love the navy and light blue paired with the gray and browns. It is a perfect line for Seattle photos.

I subscribe to Ali Edwards' Story Stamps and have loved getting these each month (I used her first set, Currently, in quite a bit of my e-course Snap, Sketch, Scrap.) As you know, I love stamping directly onto photos and Ali's Get Real set were fun to add into this album.

I usually print my photos at home but I wanted the paper to be as thin as possible since too many pages in the album would be too thick for the greeting card to hold. So I had these printed at Costco and the paper worked out really well. I was also delighted to find that I could stamp on it with the Studio Calico Color Theory inks and it wouldn't end up smearing. Hooray!

I printed all of the photos 4x6 and some I split down into a 3x4 photo on each side of the print. I like that there's a variety in this little album. You could definitely do all split 3x4 photos easily in an album like this.

I also wanted to include some of the Instax photos I took on the trip and decided to put them into a pocket so they could be pulled in out. I cut down a Sn@p pocket to 4x6 and was absolutely delighted that when I added it to the album it was the perfect size to fit the Instax mini photos in one side and then the Instax wide photos on the other side.

The Glasswing tag is actually a business card that we were given after visiting a cute store. I like that it was perfect to go into my album, with one end in the front of the album and then the store's stamp on the other side. Also kudos to stores who use rubber stamps shipping tags as business cards. I love it.

A lot of little bits from the Gramercy Park line here and there. I adhered a tag onto the pocket for the Instax photos and love the soft colors.

I love that this mini album contains so many good memories in a really simple way. I also like how well it worked out to use the greeting card as the cover - it's like there's a secret surprise hidden inside the card.

Another thing to note, if you're looking for the Gramercy Road line from Gossamer Blue it is available at Whim so Doodle and if you call them they will ship your order to you! The line is so gorgeous and fun to use.