Vintage Valise Mini Album Pt 1

Technique:  Papercrafting

Materials:
thick cardboard
adhesive
designer paper
Tim Holtz Ideology large binder spine
tissue tape
Distress Inks (black & walnut)

Tools:
Sizzix Big Shot
Tim Holtz Vintage Valise die

I recently worked with a digital stamped called First Snow, and it got me thinking about the first time I saw snow.  It never snows where I live, we're close to sea level and too close to the coast line.  We will, on occasion, get a light snowfall in the Mt Lofty Ranges, a 90 minute drive from where I live, but the snow is so light and so briefly lived that it would be gone in the time it took to travel there!

The first time I saw snow was in Mt Hood, Oregon.  I visited there in October around a decade ago, and Mt Hood is high enough and cold enough that it has snow all year around, so my friends took me to see it.  I was so excited!  I remember being near the ski lodge and there was patches of snow around on the ground.  "SNOW" I squealed.  I was told that it was most certainly not snow, it was "snirt", what happens to snow when it melts and mixes with dirt.  They did take me further up the mountain to where the snow was still around knee deep.

Anyway, the memories got me digging through my photos, plane tickets, postcards and other junk, which led to wanting to take them out of the dingy box they have been sitting in and into an album or junque journal.

The cover is made from a sheet of thick cardboard, I used the backing board to a sketch pad cut down to 14" x 4.5".  It has then been scored at 4.5" and 6" to create a 1.5" width spine.  This is slightly larger than the valise die, and just big enough to fit a 5" x 6" glossy.  A decade ago digital photography was almost unheard of, so I have a handful of actual photo's I would like to preserve.

I used tissue tape on all the edges and to re-inforce where I scored the spine.  The interior of the binder has a world map glued into position, with another piece of tissue tape that has the dictionary definition of "journey" on it.

The exterior of the binder has the vintage valise pieces.  I had a piece of leathery looking paper in my stash that I used for the suitcase.  The bindings were made from some scraps of grungepaper, inked with black distress ink, and the whole binder has had liberal applications of walnut stain ink.

I was inspired to create this by the Simon Says Stamp and Show challenge theme this week which was travel.  I didn't get enough time to even start on the inside of the album pages, so I'm just entering the binder and I'll fill in the pages over the coming weeks.