Manilla folder mini album Part 1

Hi and welcome back! I thought that I'd give you a tutorial of how I made this mini album out of Manila envelopes. This will be a 3 part post so bare with me on this one.

First off you can buy these envelopes at any office supply store. But I found these at Target, I've seen them at Walmart as well so just look in the office supply section of any store and I bet they will have them. They are the 9x6 envelopes. First off take and cut about 1/4 of an inch off the bottom of the envelope and that's going to later on make a pocket. Then just under where the glue stops cut that part off...in other words just cut enough off to get rid of all the glue and it should leave you with a little flap. Next from the bottom measure up 3" and score. You can see that I marked in black ink the score line in the picture. Then go ahead and use your bone folder or whatever you have handy to make the crease nice and neat. Then set that aside for a minute.

Ok here's where you have a couple options. You can go to the office supply store and buy the coin envelopes that measure something like 6"x3" and they have a little lip flap thing at the top or if you have an envelope maker like I do then you can make your own. I apologize that I don't have a coin envelope to show you what one looks like. Anyway, the envelope maker that I'm using you can find at www.greensneakers.com I actually bought mine from QVC several years ago and they are so handy. So my next step on this project was to make the envelope. In the above picture you can see where I've traced my pattern.

And here is what it looks like afterward...of course I've cut the top flap off so that it measures 6" tall

I now take that envelope and attach it to the Manila envelope just as you see in the picture above. Oh let me back up just one second. Do you see where I cut out the little metal clasp? Well do that as your clipping the bottom of your Manila envelope and cutting the glue strip off the top. I used a exacto knife and really carefully cut right around the clasp as it was folded with the prongs facing up.

Now once you have your envelope all attached to one another you should be able to stand it up and it will make a Z shape. I'll show you in my next post what it should look like so just hold on and I'll be right back with more instructions.