Keepsake Christmas Album
by
Rachel Paxton
Do you hate throwing your Christmas cards away
every year as much as I do? This year I decided
to try to come up with some way to preserve
our Christmas cards, as well as find a way to
organize all the Christmas letters I've been faithfully
filing away for the past six years. I decided to make
an album for our Christmas letters using decoupage
to decorate the covers with this year's Christmas cards.
I love decoupage. It's so easy to do and so versatile. It's really hard to get it wrong. I started by finding something to paste the Christmas cards on. I had some dark red card stock (next to the paper at theoffice supply store) that seemed heavy enough to withstand all the gluing. Next I cut our Christmas
cards into all different shapes and sizes. I cut out little characters, scenes, holiday greetings, and even
signatures of loved ones who had sent the cards.
I next arranged the cutouts, overlapping one another, one with the decoupage finish.
There are several kinds of decoupage finish available. You can find a variety at your local craft store. I have two different kinds: Plaid Royal Coat Antique Decoupage Finish, and Mod Podge Gloss-Lustre. The first one gives an antique-like appearance. The paste yellows when it dries, making your collage look aged. The more you apply, the yellower it gets. The Mod Podge dries clear. I used the antique finish and was quite happy with the result. You use the finish to actually glue the individual pieces on with a paintbrush,
and then when you're finished (adding scraps here and there to fill in the blank spots), you brush a coat over the entire page. After it dries for about 10 minutes, you can apply another coat. I found that adding several coats made the pages sturdier-more like a album cover, like I wanted. I had just enough Christmas card cutouts to cover two pages, one for the front cover, and one for the back cover.
After the pages were dry, I used a three-hole punch to punch holes in the covers. I decided I would use wide fabric holiday ribbon to tie the covers together. That way every year I could untie the bows and add new letters to my album. I used 2 1/2 -inch-wide wire satin ribbon (dark red). I liked the wire ribbon. It was easier to adjust the bows and looked really nice. It was also leftover from my holiday gift making this year, so I didn't have to buy any extra.
When the covers were ready, I arranged our Christmas letters from oldest to most recent, and punched holes in all of them. I then placed them between the covers and inserted the ribbon through the holes and tied big red bows to hold them together. I chose not to string ribbon through all three holes-just the top and the bottom.
I was really happy with how my keepsake Christmas album turned out. It was easy, took only about two hours to make, and I didn't have to buy anything extra to make it. After you buy the decoupage finish (about $5 a bottle), theuses for it are almost limitless. You can apply it to almost
any surface, giving you the opportunity to create timeless keepsakes in a variety of ways.
Originally published at http://www.Suite101.com.
Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer, mom, and owner offour home and family web sites. For scrapbooking, card making, gift-giving ideas, and more family memory-making
activities, visit http://www.crafty-moms.com.
