Accordion Vacation Book

This is my last entry to the Hero Arts July2010B challenge. I have worked on this 4 x 6 book for the past three evenings. I haven’t had much time during the past week to make many cards because of prior commitments and getting ready to leave on vacation. For the next two weeks I will not have the chance to make any cards but will resume making more cards when I return home.

One day last week, I was in Hobby lobby in the scrapbook section and I came across this little 4 x 6 accordion file book (see first two pictures below) and I picked it up and looked at it closely and while I was looking at it thoughts were running through my mind that I could make one of these. So, in order to remember what the little book looked like, I purchased it so that I could use it as my guide. Actually, you could say that this little book inspired me to make one last thing for the Hero Arts Challenge. We are going on vacation in a few days and I needed something to keep receipts and misc items in and this is just the perfect thing for that.

The first two pictures that are featured here is my inspiration for my accordion book.
This is looking at the book when it is opened.


This is a picture of it closed.

My book that I made starts here, this is the front cover.

This is the back cover of my book.

This is the inside of the book.

This is looking at the accordion folder that has the tabs with the different categories.

When I got home, I took measurements of the folder and figured out where the score lines went for the accordion portion of the book. I made the front and back portions of the folder and then I made the side portions of the folder. The tricky part was attaching the sides to the front. In order for the sides to fit snugly, I had to cut about ½” up on each fold of the sides. The cut portions were taped to the bottom folds. (Hope that this makes sense.)

The next thing that I did was to make the book part of the folder. I took a piece of medium weight chipboard and cut it to 6 ½” x 95/8”. Then I made score marks at 4 3/8” and 5 1/8”. Before covering the chipboard with pattern paper, I bent the front and back covers several times so that the score lines would be more flexible. Then I covered the outside and inside with pattern paper. Then I made a cover to go over the pad of paper that I inserted. I secured the paper cover with score tape and then secured the pad of paper also with score tape. In order to keep this book closed, I secured ribbon under the accordion folder and arranged for the ribbon to tie in the back. There are six sections of the folder and I made individual tabs for each section. The easy part of this project was stamping my images.

Note: The measurements for the accordion folder are: 6 ¼” x 13 ½”. I had to piece together the length in order to have a 13 ½” length of cardstock. My score lines are: 3.75, 4.25, 4.75, 5.25, 5.75, 6.25, 6.75, 7.25, 7.75, 8.25, 8.75, 9.25, and 9.75. For the sides of the folder I cut 2 at 3 ¾” x 7” and score every ½”. The inserts for the folder are 3 ¾” x 6 1/8” and I had 6 different categories: ticket stubs, addresses, gas receipts, food receipts, postage stamps, and souvenir receipts.

The stamps that were used are Hero Arts: Crossword background S5290, travel Frames CL274, Getaway Travel CL302, Grid pattern S5216, and Just A Note 4x6 CL404.

This post turned out to be rather long, but this was a fun project to do and I would make another one again. I Hope that these directions were not to confusing and that I didn't leave anything out. Thanks for stopping by and I appreciate the comments. Have a great weekend.