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Hand Made Albums

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Hand Made Albums – fast and furious!

Hand Made Albums
Hand Made Album using Andrew Martin International designer wallpaper

Hand made albums are very popular at craft fairs, especially around Christmas time. I have been making albums for several years now using my own hand-painted papers to make the covers but some were taking me days to make so I began to look for ways to create unique attractive hand made albums in a fraction of the time. I started experimenting with cheap wallpaper and my own handmade embellishments but found cheap wasn’t so great.

Then I discovered Andrew Martin International one day when I was wandering round John Lewis watching rich people buy very expensive pointless things.

Andrew Martin International produces some amazing and unusual designer wallpapers and whilst my budget would not stretch far beyond wood-chip paper for decorating (yes I know, ugh!), I could easily buy one roll to test out for classy looking hand made albums.

And my goodness, what a joy this paper is to use for crafting! I will never know if it is just as good to hang on walls, because I have made it my life’s work never to get involved with anything so complicated but, I would guess it is a decorator’s dream.

The picture you see here of what I call my ‘John Lennon’ hand made album was made using Andrew Martin’s Pinboard design. It is available here on www.andrewmartin.co.uk/pinboard-wallpaper.php

The images he has used to create this design are very retro and the way it is put together make it look almost 3D. I absolutely LOVE it!

I am not being paid to write this or to direct you to the company – I was just so pleased with the way this paper handled, I wanted to tell everyone – I can’t wait to get more of the other designs.

Hand Made Albums tutorial

If you are interested in learning how I made the cover boards for this album, click here to go to my tutorial on instructables.com

I haven’t done a tutorial to explain how I do the binding because it is explained so well in the YouTube tutorial where I learned how to do Coptic binding. My early hand made albums looked very pretty but they would never open right up and lay flat because of the way I bound them. You can find the tutorial here at Sea Lemon.

Using the Coptic binding method means that your albums will open up completely at any page and lay flat, ideal for sketch books or scrap books. So click here to go to that tutorial.

I hope you enjoy making some hand made albums – do share what you make and send me some pictures. You can easily make one in a couple of hours.

The cover boards I use tend to be recycled grey board that I buy from a local paper company who cut them to size. They also cut my pages to size, double the width I need so I can fold them and stack them in sets of four to make up the ‘folios’ needed for Coptic binding.

But I have also used cereal boxes for many of my albums and that works just fine too. Once the boards are covered, no one is bothered what your hand made albums are made of.

So click over to my instructables.com tutorial and get working on your hand made albums asap. They really do make great presents because they are all unique and you can make them as embellished or plain as you want.

Happy album making!

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