Getting Crafty: DIY Wedding Card Album

Wedding Cards. Little notes of well wishes and congratulations for a life lived happily ever after. Wedding cards serve as sweet reminders of the precious moments Honey and I shared leading up our I Do’s…

When I gathered all of these cards together, I think there might have been a million of them…cards from our engagement, cards from our showers, cards from our wedding. I knew I wanted to save each one but I needed the right way… A way that was pretty and would still let me look at them without digging through a box.

Enter Pintrest!  I first saw the idea on Pintrest: a homemade wedding card album and I knew instantly that I would do just that for our wedding cards.

 

The original instructions were written by a scrap-booker and let me go ahead and get one thing out now, I am no scrap-booker!! So even though I wanted to replicate the result I had none of the scrapbook tools she used. With a little of my own creativity and the help of some fourth grade art class tools, I created my own wedding card album!

I apologize for the extremely long post… the album was not difficult to make but it did require many steps and several supplies. Here’s how I did it:

Materials Used:

• Three different colors of scrap booking paper
• Metal number stickers
• Ribbon
• Glitter
• Bronze brads (difficult to see, they are in front of the ribbon)

I also used: (although not pictured)

• Cardboard (from a shoe box) 
• Spray adhesive
• Elmer'sglue
• Metal ring
• Scissors
• Ruler

First I shuffled and organized my cards by size and then took the largest card to use as a template.

I used cardboard from a shoe box to create the album covers. Taking the largest card, I traced around it onto the cardboard. 

I wanted my album covers to be one quarter inch larger than my largest card so measured a quarter inch border around the lines from the card.

Next I asked Honey to cut out the album covers for me. Since the cardboard was so thick I needed his help!

Album Covers

Next up was decorating the album covers. I traced the cardboard templates on the pretty scrap book paper. I used brown for the outside of each cover and green for the inside of each.

Next I used spray adhesive to glue the brown outer covers to the cardboard cut outs. This was my first time using spray adhesive. For any other first timers out there let me offer this advice, spray adhesive is not forgiving! Unlike glue sticks or regular ol’ Elmer’s you cannot slide your paper around until it’s centered. No, with spray adhesive you better get it right the first time – yikes!

I decided to use good ol’ Elmer’s glue to adhere my inner green covers. Just like the original that I was following, I wanted to make the front cover more interesting and use two different but coordinating scrap book paper.  Since the brown was solid I choose a pink and white print to compliment.

To add the pink and white paper, I measured my album cover, found the half way point and cut the pink paper to cover exactly half of the brown cover. I used Elmer’s to glue the pink and white paper on as well.

Front (R) and Back (L) Album Covers

Inside of Back Cover (green) and Front Cover

I knew from the original that I wanted *glitter letters* on my album cover. I thought I would just buy them. I quickly learned that I would be making them because they are not available in stores!

I used chipboard letters and spray adhesive and glitter. After spraying the letters with adhesive I drowned them in glitter, let them sit for 5 minutes and then shook off the excess. I repeated this twice to make sure there was plenty of glitter coverage! I could not find a “plus sign” or “ampersand” chipboard cut out so I made my own! I cut out a plus sign using left over scrap paper and covered it in glitter as well .

When they were dry, I glued the letters to the cover.

On the bottom half I created a little label to read “Our Wedding Cards”. The original crafter made hers using some very fancy scrap booking stamping tools. Since I don’t have such tools I used scrapbook paper, scissors, a sharpie and glue. First I wrote “Our Wedding Cards” with a brown sharpie on the green paper. I cut that out and then traced it on the brown paper. Since I wanted the brown paper to be a  border for the green, I cut a larger square out of the brown paper. I glued these together and then glued them to the album cover.

Next I added our wedding date to the cover. I found these adorable *metal stickers* which were super easy to stick add to the cover! In hindsight I should have gotten darker metal since the silver does not stand out against the white and pink paper, a brushed nickel would have looked better here. Oh well, I can always change these out!

Now I had the front cover complete! Next I needed to add the ribbon which will keep my album closed. First I measured my back cover to locate the middle and centered two dots horizontally along the center of the back. With the sharp end of the scissors I punched through the cardboard right over the dots. I placed the ribbon over the dots and then pushed the bronze brads through the ribbon and through the cardboard. 

Next on the inside cover I opened the brads to hold the ribbon in place.

Finally it was time to assemble it!! First I had to punch the holes for the ring to go through and hold the cards together. Honey had to help again since I could not punch through the thick cardboard. I used my biggest card to help me find where I wanted the album cover holes to be.

Next I punched holes in all the wedding cards. Then I placed the back cover on the metal ring, added all the cards on top of that, and placed the front cover on top. I closed the ring, wrapped and tied the ribbon…and voila, I had a wedding card album!!

I’m very pleased with how it turned out and love that we have a way to easily flip through all of our wedding cards!!