Christmas Cards : Accordian Style

Good morning Practical Scrappers!

Are you ready for a little Christmas goodness? I know that it's not even Thanksgiving yet but I must confess something.....

I started listening to Christmas music and working on Christmas projects a few WEEKS ago. Gasp. But I love the holidays.

Here is a new project that I will be adding to the Christmas decor this year, a display of all of our family's Christmas photo cards. I love to see them in order and see how the girls have changed through the years.

I left plenty of space, along the pages shown here and the whole back is open for cards too - I anticipate many more happy years to come of smiling faces on Christmas cards.

To create this project, I cut 12x12 cardstock in half (so that it was two pieces of 6x12) then I stuck the pages together so that all the panels are actually two layers of paper - except the front and back pages. When I make another of these in the future, I will take photos of how I do this so that you can visualize it.

I then finished all of the seams with washi tape, first doing the vertical bindings then going along the top and bottom and finishing with the ends. Two tips for this: you want to use a sticky roll of washi for this or it will peel up easily within days AND this does eat a whole roll of washi.

I first splattered the insides of each page with white October Afternoon spray. I let that dry then sprayed each page with gold Color Shine spray (I love that stuff!) and let that dry. I matted each photo card (which I did shrink down to approx 3x4 before printing, as I usually send out 5x7 size Christmas cards in the mail) on cream cardstock. I adhered it to the album then added the date to each.

To decorate the cover and back I used pieces from an October Afternoon Miscellany pack, OA stamps (with white chalk ink) for the snow flakes, machine stitching in red around the edge, perfect pearls at the corners, Thickers and tiny type for the title. I also used Stickles where the snow is on the chimney - because I love glitter.

Here is a pic of it folded up (great for storage! I will store it in a ziploc bag wrapped in tissue)...

And here is a photo of the back

Thank you for coming by to take a look today - I hope that this project has inspired you to start your Christmas projects - even if it is a little early!