Vintage Christmas Wishes Folio Album

Hello and thank you for stopping by today.  I have a great project to share with you that I created for our December challenge at A Vintage Journey, which is Vintage Christmas.  Annie is our host this month and here is her description:

For this challenge, you may find that one of your Christmas projects may just meet the challenge theme ... as long as your projects are vintage and we can see that you have in some way been inspired by Tim Holtz. (The inspiration can be in the form of a product or technique from Tim's vast range of crafty items, see our Traveling Instructions here).

We are very lucky to have Susan from Country View Crafts sponsor us every month and she is offering a £ 20 voucher to be spent online. Susan does not charge for UK postage, however, international charges may apply.

As well as the randomly chosen winner the Creative Guides will choose three pin worthy projects created by our fellow travellers ... i.e YOU ... so get creating as we would love to have you on board our Vintage Christmas Journey.

I was so excited when I saw Annie's prompt and the first thing that came to my mind was to create a Christmas album of some kind.  After mulling it over for awhile, I decided to make a folio style album that could be used as a Christmas shopping gift list before the holidays and then afterwards could be used as a photo album or journal to record the special memories of the season.

I also decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to showcase some of the techniques that Tim Holtz has shared with us, so each page was created with a different Tim technique.  I've used the tutorials from his 12 tags series as well as techniques showcased in his Compendium of Curiosities books.  Even though there are 16 pages and 10 tags inside this folio I've barely scratched the surface exploring all that Tim has shared with us, it is truly amazing the depth and breadth of his creativity!

The starting point for my folio album were some Tim Holtz Idea-ology page pockets that I've had in my stash forever.

They are designed to hold #8 tags and come with pre-punched holes for putting them into a binder.  I wanted the tags I was putting in them to peek out of the top of the page just a bit, so I cut four of the pockets down to 6 3/8" tall and that became the starting point for my measurements to construct the folio album.  I decided to add two signatures to the album and cut the pages for the signatures from some of my recycled manila folders.

The file folders were cut to 8 1/2" wide by 6 1/2" high so that when they were folded the pages would be 4 1/4" by 6 1/2".  I then cut a spine from chip board (aka an old cereal box!) and determined where to place the holes to bind the signatures into the folio by aligning them with the pre-punched holes on the page pockets.

The actual construction of my folio album was determined through watching several wonderful videos on YouTube by Debbie-Anne Parent of Ephemeras Vintage Garden.  I used her file folder junk journal video to construct the folio cover and then used her tips on book binding to sew the signatures in place.  She is much more adept at doing this than I am so I will direct you to her videos to see how it should be done LOL!

I covered the manila file folder I used for the album cover with digital collage papers courtesy of Wings of Whimsy and then added some texture around that wonderful vintage Santa image with Deco-Art Snow-Tex.

A strip of lace was coloured with some Ground Espresso distress ink and glued along the edge of the spine and then edged with silver Stickles glitter glue.

I layered several images from Tim's Festive Ephemera Pack behind a snippet of coffee stained paper doily,

and created the 'Christmas Wishes' sentiment on PicMonkey and fussy cut the image to add to the front cover.

The back of the folio album cover had another digital collage paper from Wings of Whimsy adhered to it and I then fingerpainted white gesso over top here and there.

Snowflake die cuts were coloured with Old Paper distress ink and Star Dust or silver Stickles glitter glue and adhered randomly around the back cover and more lace and silver Stickles finished it off.

The signatures were sewn into the cover with 1/8" ribbon coloured with Vintage Photo distress ink and I attached some Ideaology charms and a jingle bell to the ribbon tails.

I heat embossed the snowflake and ice skate charm with some white sparkle embossing powder from my stash and coloured the silver jingle bell with Caramel alcohol ink and then heat embossed with a touch of the same white sparkle embossing powder.

Here's a picture of the album opened up.

I used one of Tim's Yuletide Brads and a length of crinkle ribbon coloured with Vintage Photo distress ink to hold the folio album closed.

Digital papers from Vectoria Designs were used on the inside of the file folder cover and I added a pocket to the inside of the front cover to house a couple of small #5 tags.

The spine was covered with a piece of digital collage paper from Wings of Whimsy and the edges where the two papers joined was covered with more silver Stickles glitter glue.

I made a pocket for the back cover with the Sizzix 'Pocket With Scallop Edge' die from some digital paper by Crafty Secrets,

and then made a little notepad to put inside it using various digital vintage Christmas images from my stash.

And now on to the inside pages and tags. I added a pocket or tuck spot on each page for gift receipts or notes when using the folio as a Christmas gift list and then, after Christmas, the same tuck spot could be used for a photograph or journaling tag to document the holidays.  The tuck spots were mostly created with pieces from Tim's Festive Ephemera pack, so many wonderful vintage images to choose from.  I won't go into great detail on how I made the pages but I will add a link to the Tim technique that I used.  I'm also just going to show a few of the inside pages as I have already kept you for much too long!  If you are still with me, here we go.

Blended Batik Technique, Compendium of Curiosities Volume I, page 36 with snowflake stickers from the $1 store.

April 12 Tags of 2014 distress paint tissue tape collage background.

One of the page pockets with journaling/gift list tags inside

Page pocket with tags removed; I added a snowflake sticker to each side of the page pockets so they had a little interest when the tags were removed. This journaling/gift list tag was clear embossed with stamped images and then coloured using Tim's wrinkle free distress technique.

February 12 Tags of 2015 collage background

Center of the album, both pages have string closure envelopes I made with Tim's Pocket Envelope die.  The background on the left page was created with the Distress Paint Resist technique from Compendium of Curiosities, Volume III, page 47.  The right page background was created with a variation of Tim's Perfect Distress technique, Compendium of Curiosities, Volume I, page 38.  I stenciled the images with Distress ink through die cut negatives and then added the Perfect Pearls powder and followed Tim's instructions for the perfect distress technique.

Stencil monoprint technique, Compendium of Curiosities, Volume III, page 48.

Shabby Chic technique, Compendium of Curiosities, Volume I, page 49.  The paper clip was embellished with some punched circles, tiny die cut stars and a fish tail banner from some vintage paper scraps.

November 12 Tags of 2015 background.

Perfect Distress technique, Compendium of Curiosities, Volume I, page 38 with a spattering of Picket Fence snow (wish this photographed better, it is lovely in real life!) with some Distress water colour stamping, Compendium of Curiosities, Volume I, page 35 on the bottom pocket.

December 12 Tags of 2014 with the Birch Trees die cut over top of background rather than the frosted film that Tim used on his December tag.

August 12 Tags of 2015 background

And finally (it will be over soon, I promise!) here is a group shot of the journaling/gift list tags that I made to put in the pocket pages.

The tags were mostly created by either stamping or embossing images onto the background and then colouring them with Tim's wrinkle free distress technique.  I added some die cut sentiments to some of them.

The back of the tags have a place to jot down your Christmas gift ideas as you do your shopping and then afterwards you can use them as journaling spots (just write the gift ideas in pencil and then erase after the gift giving is done!).

So that is my Christmas Wishes folio album, I thank you so much for stopping by today and for sticking with me through this very long post!

Please do pop over to A Vintage Journey to see what my fellow Creative Guides have created for you this month, their projects are amazing as usual!  And I hope that you will be able to find a little time in this busy holiday season to make your own Tim inspired Vintage Christmas project to link up with this month's challenge, we'd love to see you there!  Happy creating,

Deb xo