#TBCCrafters - Paper Bag Mini Albums & a Washi Tape Pennant Banner

Check it Out!  It's been almost 2 years since the fire and although I was able to recover a small portion of my family photos, I haven't been able to replace the albums.  It pains me sometimes to think about all the time, effort and money that was put into all the albums that I had created over a 24 year period.  So now, I have a few boxes of smelly and unorganized photos and I have been wrestling with how to use them.  I have pretty much just left them in the boxes.  Some of these photos are in better shape than others and I always get a headache after looking through the boxes, because they smell so much, so I decided that I would scan them into my computer and print out the ones that I want to include in an album.  Not having the money right now to go out and purchase all new albums and page protectors, I decided I would just have to make my own albums until I could buy larger ones.  My fabulous neighbor, the same one who gave me all those Dixie cups, also gave me a huge supply of paper lunch bags so thinking back on how I use to make paper bag albums, I figured that would be a great way to start creating some new albums.  

What's really great about using the paper bags is that I can make as many pages to the album as I want and using the openings and flaps on the bags, I can even create pockets.  

So to get started I simply fold my paper bags in half and turn them in opposite directions.  Holding the albums together can be done in many ways.  For the 2 that I created for this post, I punched holes and used brads to close one together and for the other I simply ran a bead of glue down the center fold of the bag.  In the past I have also used file folder prongs and even those large split-rings.  

Once I have my pages created, it's time to decorate them! I chose my papers and photos and glued the cut pieces of scrapbook paper on as well as my photos.   I then created the pockets by punching holes and adding brads to the bag bottom flaps and by gluing the openings together at the folds as shown above.  Then I embellished using whatever I had.  I really love using kits because the papers and coordinating embellishments are all there together.  Fun and cheaper too!  

For my first album I wanted to use the photos of my kids at Indian Springs State Park and my Hello Summer kit.  This kit was amazing because I have created at least 5 greeting cards, a journal and now this album with the one kit and I still have some of it left!  I loved the pennant paper that was in this kit so I created a 3D pennant banner of my own using Washi tape and string, and I love it!

To create this banner I simply laid out a piece of string and folded strips of Washi tape around it so that I could cut the tips to create pennants.  You can cut them in a ton of different ways to create a variety of looks and you can make them as long or as short as you want.

Since this year is my 25th wedding anniversary I decided to make my hubby a celebration album with some of our favorite pics in it. Above are some of the pages in it.  I used the pockets to include tags and journal pages with notes and more pics.

I can just visualize many more of these little albums and they make great gifts as well.