Flip photo album...a cinch

I bought a Cinch binder months ago with the intention of putting together photo albums, collectibles, etc., and of course, incorporating it with my Glowforge. My daughter turning 30 and recently moving out of upstate NY to Ohio gave me the impetus to complete the project. The major part of putting together a photo album for a child, as people who have done so can attest to (especially if you are the designated family photographer), is going through the myriad of film based and digital photos you have accumulated. Once that was done, the rest was relatively easy. I am moderately happy with the results. I am sure my daughter will be ecstatic. I made a front and back cover from thin leather and glued it on to walnut hardwood. I love the way Glowforge burned text and images look on leather, but I should have used maple for the base material as I was putting text on that as well.
I though making the layout in illustrator for the cover would have been the way to go, but wih the new drawing and text features in Glowforge’s interface, I made short work of burning the covers. I simply took a piece of 4" x 6" print photo paper, got my spacing set on the Cinch, punched the holes and put the paper on the bed of the Glowforge so I could trace the outline and punches to burn the covers. I later added text to the inside and outside of the covers.
After printing out all the pictures on double-sided photo paper, I punched holes in them, cut the binding, added the covers and pictures, squeezed the binding…and viola…photo album keepsake. I would tweak a few things, but happy overall, because I know she will be happy with the album





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Looks fantastic! What a treasure for her!

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Lovely. I know she will love it.

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Thanks much! Always fun to do something you didn’t know you could do. But I think most people in this forum subscribe to that thought.

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Love what you did there - especially the leather and wood combination.

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That came out great!

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Nice! And that looks like a fun toy. I have a spiral binding punch and have made wooden journal covers to fit the holes. It’s a fun project.

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Thanks for the idea! It turned out great! Great Christmas idea for my mother!

Agreed! I’ve seen some wonderful examples on this forum. Happy making!

Thanks Shaun… I think this is a perfect gift for mom. You don’t have to worry so much about sizes or colors (though I see you have pretty good taste in that area from your recent project). Happy making!

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OP, here is an SVG that works with the Cinch. Might save you a little time later as it has the holes/spacing set up for you if you would like to save it. Obviously you can change the notebook paper size however you would like. I’m probably one of the few that hasn’t used the new GF design tools so just don’t know much about saving your work there. I have the file in AI too if you would like it.

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Such a treasure to have. The photo album will be cherished for many years.

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Pearl, you are a gem!* Thank you!

*Sorry, probably just the umpteenth time you have heard that one. Tis true though. That information is going into my Glowforge resource folder. Happy making!

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What settings did you use?

Greetings! Its been a while since that project, but I think I stuck with proof-grade settings. I used a thin natural leather and medium hardwood. So, just the cut settings to get the size and cut the holes for both the leather and the hardwood. I used an engrave setting on the writing on the leather. Engrave gives natural leather a really lovely deep brown shade on whatever you are engraving. I believe I used score on the writing on the hardwood. Except for the word "Family"which was engraved. Hope this helps. Rich

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