"Dear Santa" Altered Book

12/09/2020

"Dear Santa" Altered Book

Hi there, crafty friends; It’s Lydia Cost today, and I’m so excited to get to share with you a little altered book I created using the Dear Santa collection. You guys have probably realized by now that I’m a total sucker for the gorgeous texture of the Carta Bella papers, so I always save them for my extra special projects. This little golden book was perfect for mixing in papers and bits from the Dear Santa collection, to make the perfect place to put all Christmas day photos!

I decided to keep the construction of my book simple. I decided to keep the spine and covers intact, so that I wouldn’t have to stitch in signatures. All I had to do was cut the internal pages to leave about an inch to glue my patterned papers in. I chose to save the pretty illustrations that matched my patterned papers about every other page. It left about 18 pages to memory-keep on.

For the back of my cover, I used the pretty green solid paper from the solids paper pack. It was the perfect color to highlight the deep green colors in the rest of my book. I adhered it with glue, after I scored the paper along the bend in the spine. Now the book will have a nice cohesive look.

For the inside I began cutting my papers to the size of the existing pages. Next, I cut out the pages that would be replaced with patterned paper. I left an inch near the spine between two pages, so that I could glue in my patterned papers. This is a really easy way to work in a vintage book, without having to reconstruct the spine.

After my papers were all glued in, I got to do the fun part of decorating. I pulled out some of my favorite holiday fabric, textures, and ribbons. These are always my go to, when I need to give my altered books some extra dimension and whimsy. They are so beautiful when they are stitched on the edges of pages for tabs or layered behind photos for some gorgeous dimension.

At this point my album was really starting to come together, and I was starting to get a little giddy.

I backed all my photo blanks with some more of those gorgeous papers. Many of them I also added in some folded tissue paper and stitching for some extra character. These will make it a breeze to adhere down my photos on top when my memories are created!

I loved adding die-cut snowflakes, vellum inserts, pockets, and fun little bits to this book. I think this might be one of my favorite little golden book projects. It was such an easy album to create, and I had a lot of fun working in it.