Make a Photo Album Out of an Altoid Tin- Part 1

Christina Crawford: Hi, I am Christina Crawford, and I have been stamping for ten years, and what I love about stamping is that its really for everybody, and there's so much that you can do with stamping.

Today, we are going to teach you on how to turn an Altoids tin, just a regular Altoids tin, into a really neat scrapbook. I've made these a bunch of times and I've given them out to many so many of my friends and my family, gift card can fit inside too, if you want to go that route. This one I do keep, because my friend made it for me, and so I get to show you this one, but I'll tell you the process on how to turn this, into this.

First, there are some supplies that you will need. Of course you'll need an Altoids tin or any kind of tin, and you'll need some sticky strip, which is double-sided sticky tape, thats very good, cardstock and paper, stamps, and inkpads, Grosgrain ribbon, a paper-piercer and a pad, and you'll see that in a moment, some brads and dimensionals, a paper-cutter, and also a hammer, and I have all these things with me today, so if you dont know what any of those are, I will demonstrate and I'll show you what they are.

The first step is to take your Altoids tin and just empty out those mints. You can just put them in a bag if you want to, you can toss them out, but even if you dont like the mints you'll find somebody who likes them. You could just save those and believe it or not, little mints may crumbs, so you want to take a tissue, and make sure you get all those crumbs and all that mint dust out of there with the tissue. Just clean that out. The second step would be to measure the inside of your tin, because, you need to know what size of paper will fit inside, and all tins are not equal. Some of them are smaller and some of then are larger, so, measure the inside of that and then just get a prototype piece of card stock, you are going to need to make more of those.

Now, just to let you know, when you go to make your Altoids tin, you need am even number of panels that will pull-out, so, you could do 2,4,6,8, or 10, anymore of that and they are not going to fit inside of the tin. So now, I am going to take this sticky strip and I am just going to put two pieces right inside, so it looks like a number eleven, and I am just going to roll that right in there for now and cut it and do another piece and cut it, just two pieces. This step is so, sticky, but two pieces are enough. Then you are going to close the tin, and I've already went ahead and measured my cardstock, so then I know on this particular tin, I have a piece of red cardstock and it is about two and a half inches by three and a half inches. But just to soften it up a little bit, I am taking a corner rounder, which is an embellishment. You dont have to have this, but it does soften up the edges, and this one here is a right angle punch. Your right angle of your card stock will fit right inside, and you snip off, you get these little pieces and you can discard those.