Cosmo Cricket Blackboard Albums

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Reported by: Martha Bonneau

One of my favorite things to make lately has been mini-books, so I was excited to try one of Cosmo Cricket's Blackboard albums. The albums are available in several different shapes, for my project I chose Jack's Album, there are 6 other shapes available.

What is Blackboard you may ask, well it's just what it sounds like. Instead of the traditional grey-ish brown chipboard albums, this one is black and has the appearance of a blackboard. It is solid core black, so you can sand or distress the surface and edges and not lose the black.

The tips on the back of the packaging give you several ideas on how to use the albums and I gave a couple of those a try. The first thing I did was try colored pencils and a white Signo. I was very happy with how well the white Signo looked against the black, the colored pencils went on a little washed out so I found I had to really press down if I wanted brighter colors.

I then tried paint on the album. I tried a couple of things, the first of which was using a Heidi Swapp mask to apply circles onthe album. I had to try it a couple of times and learned that I had to apply the mask very, very lightly or when I removed it I would end up with fuzzy areas where the mask was removed.
I also applied paint to one entire page of the album. When I applied the paint (acrylic), I kind of started to worry as the page started to warp considerably. It went down as it dried, but I still ended up with a page that has a slight curl to it.



This did not affect my finished project as I was using the painted piece as my cover

All in all, I really loved working with this album. It is easy to alter, staple, sand etc. With a regular chipboard album I feel as though I need to paint or cover all of it to hide the chipboard, with the Blackboard, I love having glimpes of the black showing. I also like the variety of fun shapes they come in

Pros:

• Love the black surface, very striking.
• Solid core
• Surface is easy to alter
• Fun variety of shapes available
• Ideas on how to use album on packaging is a nice touch

Cons:

• When painting entire surface of a page, it tends to bend and stay that way.

The Jack's Album that I used for this project was purchased at Archiver's for $4.99 and I was able to use a coupon. A variety can also be found at Scrapbook.com, Scrapbooking-Warehouse.com, and Scrapbook Express.

So have you tried the blackboard albums? What are some of the things you did with it? Let us know!