Hello world! Sorry that I've been MIA from the blog! I am fortunate enough to be able to work full time during the world-wide pandemic, so I haven't found myself with a bunch of free time. But that doesn't mean I haven't been crafting! I have tried to use up supplies and work on projects that I always meant to do but never got around to.
One of those projects I've been working on for several years now is perfecting the mini-album build. Hinges have been the last sticking point: both for the pages and for the album cover. In the last few months I have solved both! I have a walkthrough video of these (scroll to the end), but here are some pictures too.
I found a way to stitch-bind ribbon hinges. I tried a few ways that were not quite perfect but I have tweaked it and now I am happy. For the covers, I found the ribbon too thin. I really liked the versatility of duct-tape for album cover hinges but, after trying it once, I decided against it. It was not quite right.
I've seen people using a "black construction tape" which looks good but you can tear it with your fingers - like masking tape or painter's tape. That seriously worries me. So, I went looking for a cloth tape and, being in Canada, the first thing that popped up was hockey tape!
EDIT: I thought I was the first to think of this supply for paper crafting, but Following The Paper Trail on YouTube used it in Feb 2019. Her video is here: https://youtu.be/f4tMFVxapD4 .
Three of these albums use hockey tape for the spine hinges. I wrapped the outer spine on all but one (the blue one). So, the blue one shows the hockey tape all around the edges. The album on the left is included because of how I've used hockey tape on the inside.
First, let's take a closer look at the hockey tape on the outside covers. (Keep in mind, only one album is actually finished, so you're looking different stages of progress here.)
The blue one shows fully exposed hockey tape hinges. You can see the seams, but if I had made the cover paper a little bigger, you wouldn't notice as much. The flexibility of this cover is amazing!
The black looks particularly good, in my opinion. I wrapped the outer spine of this album with thin paper, but I did not wrap the inside. That hides the hockey tape seams on the outside, but doesn't make the cover too stiff with paper.
I did the same on the red one, but this one I rubbed gold Nuvo Embellishment Mousse on with my finger to give an aged distressed look. The hockey tape takes mediums very well!
Hockey tape comes in "white" too, but it's not a pure "white". I show you in the video. I'm not going to use the white. If I want white covers, I will use kraft-tex. I also show you in the video that I think my new favourite combination is kraft-tex for the covers and hockey tape only on the pages. But the hockey tape on the album cover hinges is far more flexible than the kraft-tex and far more affordable. So, once my stash of black kraft-tex runs out, I use the hockey tape and only buy the kraft-tex in white. (I show you a kraft-tex one in the video.)
Here's how the inside spines look. All three have the hockey tape exposed on the inside. I think it looks just fine!
As you can see, I also used hockey tape on the insides to edge the pages! Since these are proto-type experiments, I needed them to be quick and use materials I have a lot of. Well, I have A LOT of business envelopes. But, envelopes are not very durable, so I used the hockey tape to reinforce them and it looks great, feels great on the fingers, and makes the pages match the cover! Triple win!
On one album (on the left), I painted the hockey tape with a red acrylic, metallic paint. It makes the page feel a little rough - exactly like painted canvas. Once mostly covered by the decorated pages though, I'm not worried about it.
Here's a close up of the flexibility of these spines. I can turn the book right inside out! Because the black one has paper on the outside, it's a little bit stiffer trying to turn it inside out. However, all of these albums stay shut very well when standing up - i.e. no alligator mouth!!
I'm so happy I found this medium! Hockey tape is hard to tear and pretty cheap! It comes in a small range of colours - but that doesn't matter if you can paint it! I forgot to say in the video, it comes in two widths too but I found the narrower one was enough.
