Envelope Mini Album with Kiwi Lane and Fancy Pants Designs

Hey there!  It's my turn on the Kiwi Lane blog today with a simple album using my Kiwi Lane templates, Fancy Pants Designs Nautical collection and manilla envelopes.  Yep, as in office supplies.  

I've always been a fan of using office supplies in my scrapbooking, and I've found that using manilla envelopes is a fun and inexpensive way to make an album.  An added bonus is the extra storage you can get by using the envelopes as pockets.

For my album, I wanted storage for some of the larger memorabilia that we picked up on our trip to Tybee Island (maps, brochures, post cards) and I didn't want to glue them in an album or cut them apart. I considered a few different sizes of envelopes to use that would fit the bulky papers and finally settled on 10" x 13" cut in half.  Like this:

I cut the envelope in half so I had a more manageable album size that would still have pockets large enough to store my maps, etc.  (Don't worry about things falling out of the cut through the middle of the envelope- it will be closed off enough after you bind it to keep larger items in the pockets.)

After deciding on my envelope/album size, I set to work building one page at a time.  I used just one pair of border templates through the whole album and just a few tiny templates for some embellishment and color.  I only put the paper and photos on the album pages at this point.  I used patterned paper from Fancy Pants Designs' Nautical collection, along with some of the pockets, flair and stickers from the same collection. I loved that I could get a slightly different look for each area of the island we visited and I was still using the same collection!  

After all the paper and photos were on, I used my Zutter Bind-it-All to punch the pages for binding.  It looked like this:

I could have done holes down the entire length of the book, but I kind of liked the look of two different sections of binding.  

When all the holes were punched, I bound it with some wire binding and the Bind-it-All once again.  

When my book looked like a book, I added my "hard" embellishments like buttons and brads.  The reason I wait until my book is bound to do this step is to avoid accidentally placing something hard where the holes for the binding needs to go.  Let's just say I've learned that one the hard way and I want to pass on my knowledge. ;)

Now my book is done and I can add my memorabilia to the pockets like so:

Here's what the entire book looked like, page by page:

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a great day and Happy Scrapping!

Templates used:

Sunnybrook Lane 1A & 1B

Tiny Brackets 1T, 2T, 3T, 4T

Tags 2, 4

Tiny Tags 5T

Adventure 1,2 

Tiny Sweetheart 4T