Too many photos? No problem-make it move!

So this weekend I had a blast with 39 of my closest friends cropping the weekend away in Winter Park! It was a very productive weekend for me, I completed 23 pages, leaving me with only 2 more layouts in my sons school book to complete! I am so excited!

Among the layouts I completed, was a set of photos of my sons' senior capstone project for his final grade in three classes. This layout brought to my mind a common problem we scrappers often run into. As we progress in scrapbooking- we get better at taking photographs, hence we end up with few poor shots to discard and more great photos to include! You see, I went a little photo nuts that night and took a million shots of him making ravioli. I knew I wanted to fully include the steps for this family favorite recipie, but how does one include 21 great shots on a page? You have two choices, create several layouts of the same event; or use Magic... and create an interactive page. My son's senior album is already thick enough, so I went interactive! 

       Close to My Heart's founder Jeanette R Lynton has published four layout books that I highly recommend. One of which is titled "Magic". This book has a ton of interactive ideas and how to's. I chose to use the waterfall technique. Basically- you pull on the designated tag and the photos flip open and turn pages like a book- giving you the ability to include many photos instead of just one or two. 
    Admittedly, it took a few harsh words and two brains- (my good friend Laurence was doing a waterfall on her layout as well and she walked through this journey with me) But really, the concept wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It did take time, several hours in fact to complete this layout totally, but remember I was matting and including 21 photos, that would be like doing three layouts or more if each layout only included 7 photos. So logically it would take longer than the usual 7 photo layout.
      The trick to using this technique is don't make it harder than it is. Here is the basic instructions.

1. Cut up to 8 photos to the same size and shape, 
2. Matte them on 4 pieces of sturdy cardstock cut 1/4" taller and 1" longer than the photos. Mount the photos back to back-leaving 3/4"+ 1/8" matte on the left side of the front photos and the 3/4" + 1/8" matte to the right side of the back photos so they are like a two sided page in a book. (the 3/4" border is for the binding) (For this example I used 3 x 5 photos with 3 1/4" x 6" matte-leaving a 1/8" border on three sides of the photo and the 3/4"+1/8" matte on the binding side- you can adjust the size to your photos.) You should be able to stack your mattes and flip through the photos like a book if you hang on to the 3/4" strip on the left.
3. Cut one 12" strip that is the exact height from top to bottom of your mattes,( ie: 3 1/4" tall x 12" long ) Use sturdy thicker cardstock for this. I'll refer to this piece as piece A.
4. Cut a second 12" strip from sturdy cardstock that is about 1/8" taller than your mattes. This will be referred to as piece B.
5. Cut piece C -1" x 12" from the cardstock
6. Hold piece B with the 12" length horizontally and piece C with the 12" length vertically. Fold piece C around piece B from top to bottom-and glue the ends of piece C to each other. ( around the 3 3/8" width) creating a belt like piece around Piece B.  (It helps to score piece C at the edges of piece B to make it a smoother fold) Make sure piece C will slide from left to right if you pull it.
7. Lay Piece A with the 12" width horizontally on a score board or your personal cutter with scoring blade installed. Score Piece A vertically at the 5 1/2" mark (or just a bit longer than the length of your photos with matte is.)
8. Continue to score the remainder of piece A vertically at 3/4" intervals starting at the score you just made. (you need one 3/4" interval per matte- so one per two photos total)
9. fold the 5 1/2" length on piece A under the 3/4" intervals.
10. lay Piece A on the table with the 3/4" intervals on top of the 5 1/2 " length
11. Crease each of the 3/4" intervals toward the table (all the same direction)
12. Glue the 3/4" matte of your "page one" photos to the first 3/4" interval after the 5 1/4" fold- glue only the 3/4" binding edge to the 3/4" scored interval, so it acts like the binding edge of a book and the matted photo becomes the loose pages of the book.
13. Slide your "page two" photos under the first page, with the 3/4" matte side lining up with the next interval to the right of the first, and so on until all of your matted photo pages are glued to the intervals in order. One page per 3/4" interval.   When you are finished with this step, it should look kind of like my completed waterfall.... with the photos sticking out 3/4" from each other in a domino type effect.
14. Piece A now becomes your waterfall. Keeping the fold from step 9, Slide the bottom 5/1/2" section of the waterfall between and through Piece B and C.
15. Grasp the opposite end of piece A (under the final photo) and glue it to the top side of piece C. (So the section by Piece C is sandwiched from top to bottom as follows- 3/4" interval side of piece A, Piece C, 5 1/2" end of Piece A. Piece B, the the glued ends of piece C.)
16. Cuss a few times, as you pull on the loose end of piece A and help your photos turn pages by creasing the folds again as they fall open. You may have to work the folds a few times to make it work smoothly. 

Glue the bottom of piece B and the glued ends of piece C to your layout. (the underneath side of the waterfall) 
Good luck!