Accordion Scrapboxes

While I was at the craft store the other day, I purchased two of these accordion scrapbooks-in-a-box to make for Emily’s preschool teachers. They came like this:

I thought that they would make great little end-of-the-year presents. I finally had a chance to work on them today – I think they turned out really cute!

Here are the finished boxes on the left with the closed accordion books on the right. I covered the front, back and sides of the boxes with paper. The books slide into the boxes:

I used the Stella Ruby paper collection from Basic Grey along with these BEAUTIFUL, huge flowers by Prima. I love that the ribbons I put behind them makes the flowers almost look like a little corsage!

Since the boxes already had black ribbon on them, I had to find a color scheme that coordinated with the black ribbon. I think Stella Ruby worked very well.

I cut out the letters with my Cricut machine using the Doodle cartridge. The paper and letters are adhered to the box and the book with ModPodge to make it more durable.

I filled the inside of the accordion books with photos that I kept uncropped and then matted on black cardstock to make it an easier project – there were fourteen panels on each book, front and back, including the covers.

I also thought it would be nice to include some quotes about teachers, teaching and education. So I Googled some quotes (24 different quotes – 12 for each teacher), printed them out on transparencies (after a minor situation with some thin vellum melting in my laser printer), cut them apart and adhered them over each of the photos with brads. Here’s an example of one page:

What was nice and easy about this was that by leaving the photos uncropped, each one had some empty space that I could use for the quote.

I hope the teachers like them (and that they don’t read my blog and ruin the surprise…).