Vintage Scrapbook Album- Memories of my Mother

The idea of a scrapbook album showcasing vintage photos of my mom had been on my mind for a long time. After my mom passed away, I found dozens of photos and newspaper clippings of her. They were saved in a cedar chest in her basement.

I knew I wanted to create something I could look at often. However, I didn’t want to go sort through old photographs packed away in boxes every time I thought of my Mom.

The Graphic 45 Vintage Hollywood paper collection was the perfect choice to feature all the beautiful photos I had. The cover was constructed simply by taking a piece of paper from the collection and a piece of fabric from my stash that had coordinating colors. I attached the back of the fabric to the backside of the paper using mod podge paper and let it dry under a heavy book to keep it flat. Once dry, I sewed around the edges using a zig zag stitch. In addition, I added a border of black and white diamond card stock to continue the art deco theme.

Usually I make my covers last, but I was so excited to see what the end result would be, I completed this one first. The photo I chose was one taken of my Mom while she was a model for the Morganti Modeling agency. The photo was to be placed in the center of my cover. Before adhering the photo, I positioned a thick piece of stretch lace around the middle of the cover and glued it down. This was to be the tie closure. The photo was glued to a piece of corrugated cardboard and then attached to the cover using E6000. I added faux flowers, tulle, feathers and other embellishments to frame her picture.

Now I was ready to design the interior pages and page layouts. Many of the photos were 8×10,” so off to Walgreen’s I went to reduce them down to 4×6″ or 5×7″. Each page started with either a sheet from the Graphic 45 Vintage Hollywood paper collection or neutral colored card stock. All were folded in half. I interspersed pages of patterned vellum and pages from a book on fashion throughout the ages ( of course I choose the 40’s and 50’s images for this book). In addition, a brown grocery bag, vintage music/magazine pages and an old calendar for the month of May (the month my Mom was born).

For the most part, I stuck to the cream, gold and black art deco theme, which is present throughout the Graphic 45 papers. I built each page one at a time. Pairing the size of the photo and the colors with a complimentary background page. I felt the newspaper clippings needed to be glued to something for stability. I chose either a piece of corrugated cardboard or card stock.

The album has two signatures, each with 18 double sided pages, so it ended up being quite thick. After all the photos were attached and any embellishments/lace were sewn into place, it was time to bind the signatures to the cover. I used a 3 hole pamphlet stitch. I find this type of binding holds the pages in place very well.