Memories Mini Album Tutorial

Hello, glad you could join me today for this month’s tutorial. Since May is the month we celebrate all mothers I decided to make an album using photos of my mom, my album title is “Memories”.

I got this carton jewelry box at a craft store; it measures approx. 8.5L x 6.5W x 2.5D. The album will be attached to the inside of the box using a ring binder like the one in the picture.

Step One is to make the flap longer making a cut on each of the sides of the back panel. If your box has the metal hasp like mine does, take them off and make sure that when you cover the box with paper you mark the holes for when you re-attach them.

Step Two is to cover the inside and outside of the box, I used Vintage Music Paper and reinforced the areas that fold with decorative tape.

Step Three is to add the Binder; Tim Holtz has these Ring Binders in his Idea-ology line. It’s fine to make wholes when you attach the binder since that will later be covered with pattern paper.

Step Four is to complete the Decoration of the box, since we need to cover the brads used to attach the ring binder, add a piece of pattern paper on the back panel. Add a stripe of pattern paper to the other three panels also, as extra decoration I adhered 3 layers of assorted ribbon and tied a bow with a little flower in the front.

Step Five is to reattach the metal hasp, and decorate the top of the box, I used layers of pattern paper from the beautiful My Mind’s Eye collection Stella & Rose/Mabel and a Felt Victorian Gate from Prima Marketing, added some flowers, brads, buttons, pins, a chipboard frame and ribbon.

For the album pages I used two different sizes of chipboard from a couple of 7 Gypsies albums.
The pages are decorated using rub-ons, flowers, ribbon and layers of paper, I tried not to make the pages bulky, but that is a real challenge for me since I tend to over embellish; to be able to get a better picture I opened the binder clip.

Here is a close up of a couple of the pages. I look at these photos and wish I could know the story behind them, fortunately in the case of this set of pictures the lake looked familiar to me, I googled the town and I was able to confirm the identify comparing the church in the background to a photo I found online :)

As always I hope I was able to inspire you to make your own mini album, if you have any questions post them in the comments or join the Group at our Scrappy Community.

=Di

Recycled Mini Album Tutorial-This & That

Hello and Welcome to April’s Mini Album Tutorial.

This month we celebrate the Earth, I’m sure most of you apply at least one of these to your daily life: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. With today’ Mini Album we’ll be using all three of them.

Reduce: the pieces of Pattern Paper you have in your scrap stash.
Reuse: a pair of old and torn Jeans.
Recycle: a piece of Card box.
You will also need: Fabri-Tac and embellishments for your album cover.

Why the title This and That? Because this mini will be a home to all those extra photos that don’t make it to a layout or an album.

Are you ready to turn this:
Into This:

*Album Cover

My Album cover is 7” X 7” I won’t give you measurements so you can make the album the size you want, but keep in mind that the longest piece of paper in your scrap stash might be 12” and you’ll need to fold that in half.

Step 1:
To make the Front and Back Cover cut 2 equal size pieces from the card box and 1 thin piece for the album Spine.
Arrange the pieces on the fabric and cut leaving at least 2” on each side to fold.

Step 2:
Adhere the pieces to the fabric using Fabri-Tac, start with the spine, and then attach the cover pieces on each side. Cut the corners in an angle for an easier fold (sorry I did this step backwards)

Step 3:
Adhere the fabric flaps tucking in the corners.

*Album Pages

Arrange the paper in the order you want them to appear, make the Crease of your first page in the same thickness as your cover spine, the next page should be just a slight thinner, continue this process with all the pages, they do not need to have an equal size, the unevenness gives a nice look to the album.

*Making the End sheet

This will help us join the book block to the cover, and it should be only slightly smaller then the open cover. Make sure the Crease is also as thick as the spine piece and centered.

Time to put the paper together, add glue to the Creased folded part of your first page, and adhere it to the End sheet. Continue gluing all the pages together.
Give your album more personality adding some tags and envelopes.

Now that your book block is complete and dry, it’s time to adhere it to the cover. You’ll only add the glue on the back part of the End sheet, start with the spine, then the back cover and finally the front cover.

*Decorating the Front Cover

Here comes the fun part.
I added the jeans pocket and tucked a Donna Downey Canvas Tag inside. The birds and bird cage is a Donna Downey iron on, some brads, flowers, ribbon, gems, alphas and my cover was ready.

Here are two more ideas on how to Reuse the jeans fabric.

I made this little notebook using the same technique of the above mini album but without a book spine. The inside is made out of white paper folded in half and stapled in the middle. I'll be using this book for my grocery lists.

And finally these flowers, don’t they look cute made out of blue jeans?

And there you have it, a few ideas on how to recycle those old pair of jeans.

As always I’ll have this complete tutorial posted at our Scrappy Community for future reference.

Have a Great day and Go Green! :)

=Di