a little fun with mini albums

How fast time travels … we have reached September… I do a lot of my best work in September, being my birthday month I like to make sure I have time for me so that I can create and put a lot of love into the things I love to do the most.That being said Julie and I had a lot of fun when we got together to create a couple of months ago… so you are going to have to wait for my September work.

One of my favourite things to make and put my heart and soul into are mini albums. I have not had the chance to do that for a long  time as life has had its ups and downs and all I work on are my 12 x12’s … but when we got together our creativeness just worked overtime…. we had the whole table full of stuff and came up with a mini album each. This is how I put mine together – 

the mini album is 11cm x 8cm

The printed papers have been glued on and then we have sanded the edges of the album which has given us a nice white edge. I painted the people white and then with ink lightly went over them so that they blended in with the background paper. I have added an accent color, red so that that it helps break up all that black and draws your attention to the title of the album... love these little scallop frames.

Inside the covers were prepped with gesso - then painted black. The pages of the album were created by taping the two cardstock strips together and making folds every 7.5cm. We then adhered the ribbon to the front covers before we added the insert concertina pages. Each end was taped to the album cover leaving the ribbon extending out from the album - the longer length of ribbon was on the front cover as this wraps around the album before tying it up.

When decorating the album i have used the honeycomb masklet and some red chalkboard mist.I have then used my hexagon stamp to carry on with the theme.

I've tried to keep the album simple by adding zig zag paper and washi tape in the same colors at the front cover.  All photos have been highlighted and given a doodled border so that they stand out. Another way to help accentuate your photos is to mat them with black cardstock.  I've also left the zig zag paper for my two children to type up a bit of a memory thing on what was fun for them on this trip and we can glue that in at a later time... 

One of my favourite things about creating these quick little books is that they can hold snippets of a fun time and can be given instead of cards ... they hold the best memories and take little effort to make, but are made with a lot of love.

have a great creative week
tracey