BROWN BAGGIN’ IT

I’m always amazed at all the new and fresh ideas in the scrapbooking and craft world. When I saw the little brown bag scrapbook for the first time, I thought, why didn’t I think of that? Well I didn’t, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to adapt the idea for a scrapbook that would work for me.

I immediately rushed out and bought a package of brown lunch bags, an assortment of ribbons and stared at them for several days. When I finally figured out what I wanted to do, I couldn’t stop creating. I kept adding pages, or I should say bags, to my book. I picked an Island theme for our Spring Break vacation in Hawaii. I have a small photo printer that hooks up to my camera that I have packed, so at the end of every day, I will print out 2 or 3 of my favorite pictures and add them to the bags along with journaling. When I return home, I will have a scrapbook ready to share.

I created the Brown Bag Book to fit a 7 ½” scrapbook page. Below are the instructions to create a book this size.

1. With the bag laying flat cut off the bottom, leaving 9” of the bag for your scrapbook.
2. Open up and flatten out the bag.
3. Stack all the bags and be sure that they are all trimmed to the same size. Create scrapbook pages to measure 7 ¼” wide x 7 ½” tall.
4. Create photo mats or tags to slide into the bags to use for additional photos or journaling. Adding small pockets to the pages is also a great place to tuck an extra photo or event tickets and brochures.
5. To attach the pages, sew or securely tape the edges to the bag about ½” from the outside edge. If you sew your scrapbook page to the bag, be sure you don’t sew the outside edge of the page. This would sew your bag shut. (I sewed every other layout and taped the others.) If you choose to tape your pages down, you can sew the edges before adhering to give them the sewn look.
6. When you have all you layouts completed and secured onto the bags, punch 5 holes to the edge to be bound together. (I punched holes in an extra bag to use as my guide on my completed bags.)
7. Cut enough 5/8”x 8 ¼” cardboard strips to fit in between each bag and punch holes to match up with the bags. (I use the cardboard that comes with prepackaged scrapbook pages or paper.) This will keep your binding strong to support the pages.
8. Choose a narrow ribbon to thread through and tie the bags together. Tie assorted ribbon to the ribbon threaded through the binding.