Paper Trunk: Alfalfa Sprout meets Paper Trunk

The Punky Sprout Alfalfa Sprout album is a real mixed bag of shapes and media to work with. It's like opening a treasure box of texture. It has clear pages, chipboard pages, and canvas pages in several shapes. I found it to be exciting to play with it and several of the Paper Trunk lines as I put together this mini-album.

I chose to make my album using pictures of a trip I took to visit the coastal redwood forest near San Francisco, California.

I used one of the clear pages for the cover of the album. I backed the page with paper from the Batik line and used the spiral Punky Sprout flowers along the bottom of a photo of the entrance to Muir Woods. The lighter colored flowers are muffin cups that have been flattened and cut into a spiral before being rolled.

These pages were made with more of the Batik line with a little of 1974 thrown in for the aqua color. I used some Jellybean stamps with white embossing powder on the right side. The right side is also raw chipboard that has been distressed with some white paint. Two Punky Sprout muffin cup flowers are also on the page on the right.

Chevrons are all the rage right now. The chevrons on these pages were created using Wrangler and Batik papers. The canvas page on the right was dipped in alcohol ink along the edges and more alcohol inks were dripped across both pages.

At the middle of the album, I have included information on the birth of the Muir Woods National Monument. These two pages also use Batik papers.

To soften the color scheme of the album even more, I switched to using Krafty, Wrangler, and Rockabilly on these two pages. The idea for the tree on the right came from a digital scrapbook page I saw awhile back. I used white paint over the Rockabilly paper to create the tree shape. The trunk of the tree is made from Krafty paper. Buttons and flowers from Wrangler create leaves on the tree. And, yes, that is me hugging the tree in that picture. My mother always said I was a tree hugger, now she has proof in pictures and I've admitted it to the whole world!

I decided early on while assembling this album that I would use turquoise throughout the album and that I would work on the pages in pairs so that facing pages matched each other in design scheme. On these two pages I have begun to use tulle. The page on the left has paint splatters over the raw chipboard background and a edging of Krafty paper and tulle. I have used one of the spiral flowers and made another out of Krafty paper. I also made spiral twine flowers that compliment the spiral loops held together with glued strips of Batik paper on the right side. The right page also has a bow made out of tulle. I really like the page on the right and think it is pretty even if it is about a slug!

The final two pages of the book take it out with a bang. The colors of the Socialite line are very bright and are in contrast with the dark forest. The canvas page on the left has been covered in tulle and fussy cut images from the papers. The page on the right is the inside of the back cover of the album.

The back cover was made by stamping Paper Trunk flowers onto the clear surface. I then heat embossed the flowers with metallic teal embossing powder. The heat from the embossing caused the cover to warp a bit but it now wraps gently around the album. I like the effect. I also painted gesso over the inside surface so that it is all white with flower texture inside and teal flowers on a white background from the outside.

I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to play with products from both Paper Trunk and Punky Sprout. This has turned into my favorite mini-album ever and I hope you have enjoyed looking at it as well. Here is your word for the day