What did we learn at the weekend?

I am surrounded almost all day every day with people who are mad for learning, the lifelong variety and the skills acquisition kind.  So, it seems only in the spirit of things to reflect on what I learned this weekend: how to construct an album from manilla envelopes and never to trust anything I hear on You Tube ever again.

I was looking for something on You Tube the other day when it directed me towards this tutorial from Follow the paper trail on making a mini-album from plain DL envelopes – first problem, the US version is not DL but 10 so all the dimensions are slightly different.  I really liked the look of it, plus I liked the idea of recycling envelopes (although I bought mine new, you could very easily make this with old ones) and I liked all the secret pockets.  But, never, ever believe anyone on You Tube (or in most other places really) telling you that a project is quick and easy to do.  This quick project took me all weekend and kept me awake trying to figure out how to construct it.  In the end, and this was a first for me, I took the mac up to my workroom and worked along with her.  It is ‘cool’ but it was time consuming and tricky, and you do use recycled envelopes but you will also need a lot of decorative paper, which I happened to have lying about, plus a circle punch and a corner rounder-offer if you want the classy look:

I was lucky that the weather was dry and warm so the glue dried really quickly otherwise I think it would have taken me even longer.  The original had chipboard covers but I made mine out of Tim Holtz grunge board which is some sort of composite paper which is flexible but sturdy and I also used some of his pre-cut shapes for the hinges.  I painted it all to look a bit distressed:

It has made a lovely chunky little book about six inches by five and a half with a depth of about an inch. I really like open spine books and this is one, achieved by applying double sided tape a bit in from the edge to allow for give.

It has pockets on both sides that you can slide things into like tags, cards, photos and so on:

All in all, I think it’s a pretty nice thing, but it certainly wasn’t quick, and it was only really easy when you had figured it out:

To be fair, when the video went up there was a link to the website, I think, but that has since gone missing so you have to know what you are doing a bit to follow it.  But I recap: never ever believe anything you see on the internet.