My traditional albums sit lining my bookshelf. They are lovingly filled with photos and journaling and ready to be held in a lap and enjoyed. But, I can't ever remember which album is which. I never got around to having them imprinted with Persona and now most of those albums are expired. I also don't like the process involved with Persona so it was easy to procrastinate.
I'm very excited about making Custom Album Covers (I've got one in the works) but that won't solve my problem of being able to tell which album is which as they sit on my shelf.
I've been brainstorming ideas for labeling my album spines. I wanted a solution that would NOT negate my cM album's lifetime warranty. I thought about sewing something. I thought about office supply stores and what they might have for album labes. I saw something like this on another blog and I do like these.
I thought about just sticking on a label like library books, but I worried about how the sticky stuff would affect my album long-term.
I took the spine out of the album and replaced it with a couple of magazine pages and my AHA moment came. I realized I can stick a piece of paper into the cover of the album right over top of the spine.
I sat down at my Storybook Creator software. I opened a new project. I decided to play around with a custom 8X10 project so I could try out my idea on my own home printer.
First I measured the spine width of each album I wanted to make a spine decoration for. Here's how I did it. I took a piece of cardstock and put it into the album over top of the spine.
Then, I ran a pencil along the cardstock at the point where it entered the album slots on each side.
I removed the cardstock from the album and measured the the area that would show on the back of the spine to prepare to make my design.
Once I knew the size of the spines that I would need to make labels for, I setup my storybook project to mimic that. To do so, I used guide lines.
I was making two separate spine labels on the same project page. Each was about 4" high. The guide lines mark two separate labels. I printed the page as a test from my home printer in draft mode. I liked the look, so I decided to print it as an 8X10 photo to get a more glossy/professional look. I could have used an 8X8 or 12X12 page print and divided it the way I needed to produce the same effect. Once I had the 8X10 photo, I cut it in half to separate the two spine labels. I put one into the album just as it was. For the other, I put it inside of a page protector and cut the page protector to fit around it. I could have made an 8X8 page print for just one spine and put that into a page protector. I actually liked the way it looked without the page protector much better - however, I got a glossy photo and I think I'd like it better if it was produced with a matt finish.
Once my digital spines were done, I got to thinking about my traditional customers and how if I shared this idea, they would want to make their own album spines as well. SO... I made one more spine using cardstock, stickers and a pen. I encased it in a cut-down page protector and it worked fine too. The traditional one REALLY needs the page protector, so I think I prefer the digital look.
I'm going to be playing around with other sizes and photo finishes and once I'm happy with the final result, I'll share those ideas here. However, my idea is now born and I'm happy to get going with it.
Happy Spine Making! Sher
