Wednesday Worktable - December 3rd 2014 - Baby's First Christmas

This is my contribution to WOYWW (What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday), over at JuliaDunnit's Blog. Each Wednesday, Julia invites fellow crafters and bloggers to show a photo or two of their worktables, and explain what they've been doing.

Pieces of card and fabric, ready to be made into a photo album. 

A customer, has asked me to make her a small photo album, to hold photos of her baby girl's first Christmas. She already has a small album for her first baby, but she couldn't find a ready-made one she liked this time. We have decided that the pages will be multi-coloured, like a rainbow.  She saw the gorgeous cotton fabric, with doves and yew branches, on another book I'm making and asked for this to be on the album's covers.

We've been discussing ideas for decorating each page, with little stamped images.  I have this great collection of small Christmassy stamps, so they will be ideal.   The white tag is perhaps going to be a label, for the front of the book, with "Baby's First Christmas" (or the baby's name).  

The book will be a concertina, which fastens with ribbons at each side, so it can be opened out, to display the photos.

I've made a number of concertina albums before - though this is the first with rainbow pages!  These are the ones I made recently:

Covered with lovely cotton fabric (these are for sale in my online shop ;-) )

These three little books have covers of Liberty Tana Lawn - one of my favourite fabrics to work with.  I want to make some more of these, once Christmas is past.

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That's my contribution to the WOYWW Story this week - thanks for reading.  

Why not pop over to Julia's Stamping Ground and see what else is going on in the crafting world?

Liberty Photo Albums

Three small concertina Photo Books, covered with Liberty prints!

The green and light pink fabrics are called "Capel" - one of my favourite designs.  The red and pink pansy pattern is "Ros" and it comes in other colourways too.

The albums measure 7.5" x 5.5", which means they will hold photos up to 7" x  5" in size. 

There are 28 pages, using both sides of the concertina (30 if you used the inside of each cover).

The pages are stiff white cartridge paper, which means photos can be fixed to both sides of each concertina page...

... but you can open the concertina like a "normal" book, by leaving the ribbons fastened at one end, or the other - or it can be opened out into a continuous strip, with photos both sides.

The books look really nice with a label on the front, which I can print with one or two lines of text...

...like these!

And look what arrived in the post today!  

 New Liberty Print fabrics!  I love them! 

 I already have plans for more small photo albums... 

A Mini-Album

I think I mentioned that DS had chosen to go for a day out at "Go Ape", for his birthday this year?  Anyway, that is what he did; his friend and DH went round the course with him.  I was allowed in as a spectator and I took over 100 photos!  They had a training session, then went round the rest of the course.  Overall, from start of the training, to the final loooooong zip-wire, it took us 3 hours to go round.  It was brilliant fun and the boys had a great time.
This weekend, it's J's friend's birthday.  Today he has been invited to go and join his friend for his own birthday treat - they are going "skydiving" at a local centre, where they have a large, vertical wind tunnel.  I don't think that activity lasts 3 hours though - probably more like 3 minutes I'm afraid, but I hope they are going to have fun.
Meanwhile, as a little gift, I have made this mini-album for J's friend:

The book is made with Kraft cardstock and double-sided papers by American Crafts.  The letters are by Papermania and MLS. 

J. took part in the choosing of the materials and embellishments.  He wrote this journalling panel.  Under the journalling panel and the kraft tree, there are magnets, which fasten the flap.

The back cover, which wraps round to make the front flap, has sparkly lines on it.  DS thought that they were not "girly", as the colours of the stripes are quite strong.  So that was alright then... !

You may notice the arrow has "pull me" written on it. The green-striped paper is attached to a piece of kraft cardstock, which pulls out from under the photo.  It has a message from J. to his friend, about the fun they had.  J is really pleased with this book and I'm sure it will please his friend (and parents) too.  In fact, I'm rather pleased with it myself!

I also made a 12" Page today.  But I can't show it to you. It's a Secret.  If you want to know why, go and look here!