A vintage inspired mini album of thanksgiving

Hello everyone!  It's Julie here today with an album of thanksgiving, and I'm not talking about the meal.  This album is made for keeping track of what you are thankful for this time of year.  I'll show you how I made this one that I'm going to sell at a local craft show.

First, I needed paper bags and I chose two plain lunch bag sized paper bags and one pink bag.

Since I decided to work on this while watching football, I had to drag down my whole scraproom and set up shop in the living room.  Sadly, I do not have a tv up in my scraproom.  Now if you'd like to make a paper bag album for yourself, you certainly don't need to have a ton of supplies ready.  I'm just one of those crafters that experiments with all kinds of stuff until I settle on something that works.  A few of my essentials include fabric pieces, bingo cards, sheet music, old notebook paper, Cuttle Bug and Papertrey Ink Dies, as well as Papertrey Ink stamps.

I started by folding the bags in half.  I alternated the openings of the paper bags so all my inserts would be on different sides when it's open.  I appologize for that green loop which appears to be growning out of my album.  I had a crafty bag on the floor and that is the strap!  Sorry!  :)

You will need to sew the bags up the middle with a sewing machine.

For my cover, I measured the paper bag front and cut out a piece of fabric the same size.  I used my sewing machine to stitch around the fabric BEFORE I adehered it to the front.  Once on the front (used Yes Paste), I added various vintage goodies until I got it the way I wanted it to look.

This is my first interior page.  I frayed the edges of the fabric and stitched all little embellies on before I adhered to my album.

My next set of pages used one of my favorite supplies, old papers! 

Above is a different angle of the pages.  I used Papertrey Ink Gratitude Journal stamps for this project.

My next set of pages!  I just loved the doily die from Papertrey Ink and I decided to use it with vintage sheet music.  I also used some 7 Gypsies tape under the die cut.  The little tags with pink satin ribbon were also made using a Papertrey Ink tag die.

When looking for fabric, hit up the thrift stores!  You don't need yards and yards, just a scrap will do nicely on a page!

I also love vintage lace and use it whenever possible.

Here's a pic of the inserts I made using the Papertrey Ink tag die as well as a vintage Bingo card and Vintage postcard.  These items peek out of the paper bag openings.  Perfect for journaling and leaving your thoughts.

My back cover.

I hope you enjoyed looking at this paper bag album and get inspired on making one for yourself!