Lockdown Album by LILING PAYNE

Happy New Year everyone and I hope you this New Year brings us lots of new crafty inspiration and lovely products from Themadscrapper.co.uk.

On looking for inspiration for this month’s project, I saw on YouTube and Pinterest, crafters using products from Photoplay which had a Covid 19/Coronavirus theme and on checking Themadscrapper.co.uk website, I saw other companies e.g. The Dusty Attic had also produced Covid 19 ephemera and I thought given the year we have just endured, it would be a great way to document this year with either a mini album or journal using these papers and ephemera,  so… aside from the negatives of not seeing family and friends, I focussed on the positives such as time to do things I’d put off e.g. reading books on my bedside table, watching box sets. Films and off course crafting.

I also took inspiration from “Stack the pages album templates” from Jenofeve designs which are great printable mini album templates for beginners and Jenofeve designs also has a YouTube channel for all her template tutorials .

This is a soft journal type album which doesn’t use chipboard covers but 300gsm black cardstock for the cover and pages.

This is the cover and a journal time notebook I made from photocopy paper and a cardstock cover which I matted with the patterned paper to give me journaling pages in the middle of the album

Supplies used from Themadscrapper.co.uk:

Photoplay the New Normal 12”x12” paperpack

Photoplay the New Normal sticker pack

Photoplay the New Normal Ephemera die cut pack

Photoplay  Living the quarantine life stamp set

The Dusty Attic, Covid 19 wordpack

The Dusty Attic Covid 19  shapes

The Dusty Attic Covid wordplay

Magnetic snaps

Archival Ink stamp pad Jet Black

Idea-ology design Ruler 12”

Ranger Glossy Accents

Own supplies used:

Black A4 cardstock minimum of 250 gsm however I used 300gsm as it’s all I had

Double sided tape

Collal glue or pva glue, however I prefer Collal glue as it doesn’t seem to wrinkle lighter weight patterned paper as much.

12” Scor-pal score board

Tonic Paper trimmer

Make the cover and album pages as follows:

Inside first page

Inside second page

Fold and burnish the score lines to form the album cover and inside pages

Apply double sided tape to the outside of the inner page spines then attach to the cover of the album.

To form the inside cover triangle pockets 

Apply tape to the tabs to form the pockets then attach these to the inside of the cover pages.

Belly band size is 2” x 9.25”, score at  0.5” and 8.75” to form tabs, apply double sided tape and attach to one of the pages

Cut cardstock to 5.75” x 4.5”, score at  0.5 and 5.25 “ on long edge, then 0.5” on 4.5” edge, fold and burnish and apply double sided tape to the 3 tabs to form a pocket

You can make as many pockets or belly bands as you like.

Now decide which patterned paper you want to mat the pages and pockets with and play around with the ephemera, stamps and embellishments to make the album your own.  Here’s how I’ve decided to mat the pages and create journaling pages from photocopy paper which I stamped and attached to the pages.

The mats for the pages were cut at 4.75” x 8” which gave me a eighth of an inch border round the mat.

The waterfall page elements were cut at 3.75” x 4.25”, score at 0.5” on the 3.75 inch which gives you an eighth inch border around the 3”x4” journaling mats which came with the paper range.

If you have photos from lockdown, you can either create a photo mat and attach the photos to the mats or use the journaling cards and attach a relevant photo to the back.  Basically make the album your own, use it as a diary and list all the things you remember were positives, store newspaper articles 

Here’s the finished album which I’ll add things to now that we are still in lockdown: 

So here on these next 2 pages, I made a belly band which was cardstock cut to 2” x 9.25” with tabs scored at 0.5” and 8.75”.  The mat was cut from patterned paper to 1.75” to 8”.  This band  can be used to hold pictures, ephemera, receipts etc.. Then  I placed the journaling type book inside the middle of the main album and used an elastic hair band to hold it in place, however you can use ordinary elastic if you prefer.

In the journaling add on, I used the stamps to make a bullet journal, diary, so be creative, look at Pinterest or YouTube for bullet journal ideas and either use stamps or your own drawings to journal.

Happy Crafting!

Liling Payne January 2021