For the love of snail mail

Hello friends and happy July! It's the first of the month and that means we have a new challenge starting over at the Mini Album Makers Challenge blog.
Like always you can add any type of book or album to the challenge and our sponsor this month is Lindy's Stampgang.

My project this month is a correspondence folder:

I have fallen in love with sending letters by snail mail, but this particular project is actually meant for a friend.

It all started with a modest old manilla file folder. Regulars will know that I have used these a lot lately, but I just love how these folders are so versatile and can be used in so many ways.

Here is a view of the inside, so you can see where it is going:

I'll give you a brief run down of how I put it together:

I started by cutting off the tabs and then cut off a piece as you can see on the photo. The bit on the right side will be folded up to create a pocket.

I will also add a vertical pocket on the left. Above you can see the hinges I cut from the left overs of the folder to make the pockets deeper.

I decided to cover the outside of the folder in calico fabric and used mat medium to do so.

I also added a bit of lace over the spine and coloured the fabric with Vintage Linen Distress Spray.

I made sure to cut the fabric large enough so it would fold over the edges, and as you can see, the inside at this stage still looks terrible, but that will soon be remedied with some pretty  paper. The pocket on the right at this point has not yet been attached. That will happen when the rest of the inside will be covered with design paper. The paper I chose was from 49andMarket.

Here you can see what it now looks like from the inside. I adhered the paper using strong double sided tape as that stops the paper from bubbling or warping. I had these to metal tab things in my stash so decided to use them as decoration, though they have little pull handles, they really serve no purpose....

In this photo you can hopefully see how the hinges I showed above are used to add depth to the pockets.

Alright, now for the contents. As this is a correspondence folder it obviously needed some writing paper and envelopes.

My latest passion is using wax seal stamps, so I held the paper and envelopes together with some ribbon and a wax seal, like you sometimes see in posh wedding stationery.

Here you can see how the paper and envelopes fit neatly into the pockets.

One of the things I like about altering these file folders is that they have multiple scores on their spine, which gives them enough depth the create hinged pockets that will hold things like envelopes.

The front of the folder was further decorated with some rice paper scraps and another wax seal and that was pretty much it.

Don't forget to go over to our challenge blog and see the amazing albums my team mates have created and if you love making books, journals or minis please share them with us over there.

Thank you for your visit like always and have a fantastic month of July!

xxxxx