Many of us have Cabinet cards amongst our private collections and, whilst these cards are popular for artists to alter and incorporate in their wonderful artwork, if they are of our own family they are worth protecting and worthy of inclusion in the albums we create.
Most Cabinet cards were posed studio portraits, created by professional photographers in studios in the mid to late 1800’s, before the advent of personal cameras and 35mm film. The name and address of the photographer was not only printed on the back, usually in a highly decorative manner, but sometimes also along the border on the front, below the image itself.
This is often an interesting fact in itself as we can trace the movements of our families from this and is therefore another good reason to keep the Cabinet cards unadorned.
To create two simple album pages using my Cabinet cards, I also used the following materials:
• Adhesive: Art Accentz double-sided tape (Provo Craft)
• Brads: pewter heart shapes (Making Memories)
• Cardstock
• Hole punch: 1/16”
• Ink pad: Brilliance Graphite Black (Tsukineko)
• Marker: black
• Patterned paper: Ancestry Collage (Karen Foster Designs)
• Rubber stamps: Scroll from Venezia Correspondence (Stampington & Co.)
• Scissors
• Stickers: Ancestry, Journaling (Karen Foster Designs), raised stickers from Renee Family collection (Me & my BiG ideas)
• Misc: Small blank stickers to seal the back of the brads
This is how I created two simple pages. They were not over decorated so as not to distract from the cards themselves, yet they are now safely housed within an album for safe keeping.
Family:
Using Karen Foster Designs’ patterned paper from the Ancestry line, I stamped a border around the edges with the scroll stamp using Graphite Black ink.
This was allowed to dry. Whilst waiting for them to dry I took several Karen Foster tags and stickers and edged them all with black inkpad. The tags were mounted on cardstock and trimmed, to give them body.
I then took a raised sticker by Me & my BIG Ideas and painted it black with a marker pen.
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The Cabinet cards were then arranged across the page with the tags and stickers. I attached all the Cabinet cards with Art Accentz very strong double-sided tape.
The tags (already mounted on cardstock) were punched with a 1/16” hole punch and added to the page with heart shaped brads. I added small blank stickers on the reverse to hide the brad fastenings. This also prevents the brad from damaging subsequent pages.
Tradition:
For the Tradition page, everything was constructed in the same manner, using the same paper, but with the addition of a little extra stamping in the center as I had planned on using fewer Cabinet cards on the second page. Once you have planned your layout, stamping in the center links the images on the page.
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All the tags and stickers were treated in the same way as before and all the tags were mounted on cardstock again before adding to the page with heart shaped brads. The brads were also sealed on the reverse with small blank stickers for protection.
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