Day Album: Paper Bag Tutorial

As promised, here is a quick tutorial on how I made my Day Album paper bag mini album for the December blog hop with Just a Few Friends.  It's a long post, please go to the end of it as it's the 3rd project.

The paper bag I used was large, it measured 16 1/4" x 9 3/4".  I was designing it to be sort of a "day album".  I used a simple ribbon closure, but you could do any closure you wanted..velcro, magnets, belly band, etc. You can also use any size bag you want.

 First, I folded the bottom of the bag (on the left) over, and gave it a good crease with a bone folder, then I added a 1/4" gusset to the right of that crease, giving the album a little extra wiggle room.

 Then I took the bag bottom flap, and folded it to the left, so that I created a pocket on either side of that fold.  I used wet glue to secure this fold AFTER I adhered my papers to the bag.

 This is just a picture of the 1/4" gusset I created above.

 Then I opened the bag sides, and cut on the 2nd score line on the top and the bottom.

 I put the bag sides back where the go on the left, and left the ones on the right out.  This is going to create page flaps and pockets.

 I folded the bag flaps to the inside of the book, creased well.  Then I folded the bottom of the bag over, finding where the far right flap would go, made a score, then another score at 1/4" away from that.  Again, this gives the book a little more wiggle room.

 I trimmed off the edge of the bag to give a straight edge as well.

 Next, I cut the flap we made with the sides of the bag again to finish the page flaps.  The two smaller flaps folded inside the bag again.

 I didn't use this opening in the album at all, since this was going to be part of the cover and closure of the book.  I folded these little pieces in, and adhered the piece together.  Then, when covering this piece, I wrapped paper around the whole flap for stability.

I then measured and cut two pieces of card stock to adhere to the flaps of the bag that we created, making the flip out pages.  

I covered the flaps with paper, and adhered them onto the card stock pages, one flipping up and one flipping down.  I then had created two pages with two pockets.  

 This shows the flaps closed.  On the LEFT I added a card stock page BEFORE I placed paper on the pocket created by the bottom of the bag.  Closed, it has the pink mat...

...open it has the blue mat on the page.  It was just another way to add more space to the book.  I also adhered the mats so that tags could be slipped behind them for journaling.

I used the same technique with some patterned paper on the back of this book (the red striped paper).  It opens to reveal the back page of this book (the green dotted paper).  Again, I added the page with a 1/2" tab to the back of the album before I added the green paper.

And here it is, opened up.  

I hope that this tutorial helped, and you all have fun trying this out.  You can do this with any size album, and you can get creative and add as many interesting options as you want!  

Have a great day, and remember to ROAR WITH PRIDE!

Stay Crafty, My Friends!