Sarah's Elf Boot

Oh my gosh!  Look at this fantastic project that my niece Sarah created for her mom for Christmas!  It's an Elf Boot with a tall mini-album inside chock full of photos and other goodies, made using Kathy Orta's (Paper Phenomenon) Hocus Pocus tutorial!

This was a very involved project, with a 3-D boot complete with curved seams and a multi-paged album with lots of interactive elements.  Sarah worked on it for a couple of months with a big push at the end to finish in time for Christmas.

Sarah also made a brave decision to make a video of her work and enter the project in Paper Phenomenon's Kit Club Contest.  Please consider visiting the contest web page and voting for her entry - scroll down to the bottom of the page - it's number 41.  Just click on "Vote" under the photo of the Elf Boot.  And please note, I was just Sarah's helper on this project - all design decisions and construction choices were hers.  I cut and colored at her direction and did the craft knife cutting, but this was her project. You can see the video on the contest page or at the end of this post.

And now for some more photos and details on the project...

The main paper line use for the project was Recollections "Warm Wishes".  The boot was covered in My Mind's Eye Lost and Found Christmas and some of that paper collection was used in the album as well.

The snowmen near the boot heel are fussy cut from the Warm Wishes paper.
Clipped to the mini album are a variety of charms cut with Tim Holtz Movers and Shapers dies.  They were cut out of grunge paper and painted or colored before Distress Glitter was added to make them sparkle.  A green tinsel twine bow completes the charm element.

Sarah wanted to do something different for the front of the boot instead of lacing.  We had a nice set of Mambi Chips peppermints and candy canes in various sizes and they worked perfectly to be the buttons on the boot.

The tip of the boot has a large green jingle bell attached with some wire.




Now on to the mini-album....

This is a tall album - about 10" tall and 5 inches wide.  Since the top of the cover shows when it is in the boot, Sarah wanted something that would look good no matter if the album was in the boot or out on its own.  After some deliberation she chose this Uptown Rubber stamp image which we increased in size so it would be just the right fit.  See Santa peeking out in the first photo when the book is in the boot above?  I think it was a great decision.

You can also see some of the grunge paper charms better in this photo as well.

Here's the inside of the front cover and the first page.

Sarah fussy cut a snowman to be a pocket for a photo on the cover.

The tutorial explained how to add an element without increasing bulk near the hinge.  On the first page Sarah used this technique to add an envelope (the candy cane striped paper) created with the We R Memory Keepers Envelope punch board.

Behind the envelope is the base page 1.  Each of the four pages in the album  has the same basic design - diagonal pockets on the front and a large pocket that is used to attach the page to the spine using Kathy Orta's hinged binding system.

On this first page you can see where Sarah used a border punch (EK Success) to add a decorative element to the pockets.

There's lots of photos of Sarah, her family and pets throughout the album and you can see a couple peeking out here.

Here you see the back of page 1 and the front of page 2.

The back of page 1 is decorated with lots of stamped images (I have lots of winter and Christmas stamps and you will see Sarah selected many of them to enhance the album pages).

The red side flips open as you will see in the next photo....

...here is the back of page 1 flipped open.  Sarah used Kathy's technique of gluing in a "U" shaped pattern to create an additional pocket when she attached the stamped snowman image.

I should have pulled out that photo- it's a cute one of Santa and Sarah's dog, Clover.

A few small image on the outside of a long vertical pocket on the right with more photo mats peeking out from the pocket.




...and turning the page....

Here we have the back of page 2 and the front of page 3.  We'll see the details of the back of page 2 next, but on the front of page 3 there's an added pocket with Tim Holtz Ice Skate die.  A photo mat pulls out.  Behind that pocket is the base page 3 with it's diagonal pockets and photo mats.

On the left, the little stamped snow angel image has a magnet to keep this jam-packed pocket closed.  You'll see all the goodies inside in the next photos.  We love using Basic Grey magnets for closures

When you open the pocket first you see stickers spelling out "Jingle" and two pockets on the left.  There are photo mats with stamped snowflake images in those pockets.










but wait there's more...

That side flips open again to reveal yet another pocket with several photos.

This album design has oodles of places to put photos.  In fact the pages got so plump from all the photos and embellishments, even though Kathy had designed the album for one or two more pages, Sarah had to stop at four!!

on to the back of this page and the front of the last page....

We'll open the back of the page on the left in the next photo, so let's talk about the front of the last page first... There are a couple of stamped images and more of those Mambi dimensional peppermint stickers.  You can see some photo mats peeking out of the long vertical pocket on the right.

Now, as to the left side, that's another add-on pocket assembly that is held closed by a magnet behind the St Nicholas image...

There are pull out photo mats behind those red circles  and more photos tucked into the vertical pocket.

...and now to the back of the last page and the back cover.

Sarah designed the back of the last page herself.  She wanted to have multiple pockets and had a clear vision of what it was to look like,  I was instructed to color the four stamped images with a variety of colors for the sky.  It looks really cool.

The top stamped image is hiding behind a half-circle image that is attached to a photo mat.  The bottom of the image is loose so that it can hang over the op pocket.

And finally on the back cover, Sarah is peeking out behind the Christmas tree.

Sarah and I had a lot of fun working on this project and her mom was thrilled as you can ell imagine.

Here's Sarah's video in which she explains the project and how much fun it was to make...