Thursday, February 19, 2009

Make a Clear Album! Part 1 of a 3-part tutorial


Have you seen the cute clear albums that are all the rage these days? Have you ever wanted to try making one? Here's your chance. I used a clear album from Creative cuts and more for my base.

We will break this project up into 3 parts:
Part 1: Stamping your album pages
Part 2: Adding papers and photos
Part 3: Embellishing and binding

Today we will do step 1. You will need a clear album, foam stamps, foam brushes and acrylic paint.

To begin remove the plastic film on the front side of the album page. Squirt a bit of paint on to a piece of waxed paper and use a foam brush to "ink" up your stamp and press it on the album page. Lift the stamp strait up and try not to wiggle it at all or you will have a blurry image. Don't worry if it's not perfect, it's just an opportunity for embellishing! Drag the brush along the edges of the page if you want to give it an inked edge and set aside to dry. Repeat with the rest of the pages. DON'T FORGET TO REMOVE THE FILM BEFORE YOU STAMP THEM!!


While you have the paint and brushes out look in your assorted chipboard stash, grab some shapes that would work in your album and paint them, you can swipe paint on sheets of stickers too if you want to use them but don't have just the right color for your book. Acrylic paint is an inexpensive way to update and coordinate your supplies.

Now clean your stamps and brushes (just because they are called disposable doesn't mean you need to toss them after each use, they will last quite a while!) I keep an old toothbrush under the sink to clean my stamps, I squirt on a bit of dish soap and they are as good as new!

This is the last step for each part of our album: Clean up your mess! Put away the paint and foam stamps because you won't need them again for this project and you will have a lot more energy to continue this album when you have a nice clean space to work in! We will do part 2 of out album tomorrow, thanks for stopping by;-)

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