Travel Memories By Train

Today I would like to share another one of my many paper collections with you. My Great Grandfather Good used to work for the Lehigh Valley Railroad and I grew up hearing many stories about this amazing man. I love my vintage ephemera, but when I see something from this particular railroad, it brings back many stories and family memories from my childhood.

The Foundations Album is a wonderful way to display a large and dimensional collection of goodies. Granted, I don't have many items of my Great Grandfathers, but I do have some excellent treasures from various railroads. The spaced out sections in this album allowed me to created several pockets and spreads to safely put items. The best part is they can all be taken out and viewed on both sides. 

I'll begin by sharing some photos of the completed album, then show you a couple of things I did to get the train of creativity rolling. I used papers from Around the World 12x12 Paper Pad.

The right hand "post card" is from the paper collection and made for an easy pocket.  

I used a small piece from one page to make this "map" envelope.

One of my favorite Alpha Stamps collage sheets for this project is called Vintage Maps. 

There aren't only vintage maps on this sheet. Check out all of the extra cool treasures. 

This journal may look complicated and time consuming, but the papers really made it simple. Above and below you can see more examples of pockets and spots to hold other tickets and memorabilia.

A piece of crinkled seam binding (just wet, ball it up, and iron) makes the perfect tie to hold a vintage map, tags and an authentic key.

Below is a favorite page. All I did was put some folds onto a piece of paper to create tiny areas to slip old tickets into.

All of the above elements came from Alpha Stamps collage sheets and I love how artistic and thought provoking it looks.

You might be asking where I obtained these gorgeous, rusted hinges. I'll be honest, they are faux hinges from the Alpha Stamps Hardware Collage Sheet. I'm impressed with myself and how real they look.

I used Dark Chocolate Liquid Pearls to create old, rusty screws.  The thing I love about this stuff is the ease of altering it and making it even more dimensional with a heat gun. I literally added one big drop and heated it until it bubbled. Then I pushed a real screwdriver in to make an indentation, creating a faux, worn and rusted screw.

Next, I traced around the image with a brown water color pencil, and used a blender to blend it all together. I also added a few touches of more liquid pearls to make it extra rusty.

Now, I'd like to recap the entire journal with all of the pages opened up. The main papers I used for this beauty came from the Around the World 12x12 Paper Pad. It gave me an excellent layered foundation to add my vintage items to. But before I used those pages, I began with a base of tea dyed paper that I created myself. I add brewed tea to a squirt bottle, place the papers in a deep aluminum tray, and squirt the pages down. Then I iron the pages to dry them quickly and really get the tea colors into the paper. 

I cut all of the paper to the dimensions of each page fold of the journal, then covered each section with a glue stick and pressed the paper onto the page. Since the overall journal has a vintage feel, I didn't worry about each page being laid perfectly or extending off of the page. I always have emery boards laying around, which are perfect for filing down bits that are too large.

A large needle was used to sew some elastic cord onto the page, which was sized to fit some old tickets.

Liquid glue was used to attach just the edges of designed paper, which created pockets and places to insert vintage pages.

Wow! I took a lot of photos, and hopefully you are inspired to go and create something that excites you and gives you satisfaction to look through time and time again. I know this book did that for me!

Alpha Stamps Supplies Used

Thanks for stopping by and may all of your travels each day be memorable!

xo
Rhonda...