Scrapbook & Cards Today: Grateful For Home Mini Album

Hey everyone! I'm back with a mini album share. Yes, you read that right. A mini album. I honestly can't even remember the last time I created a mini album. It's been years and years, other than a few 6x8 albums that I have started, in varying stages. So when I got my assignment for the Fall issue of Scrapbook & Cards Today, and saw the words "mini album" and "shaped album", I was scared.

Luckily, I was able to pick the shaped album that I wanted to use from Maya Road. Since they were looking for albums with a theme of gratefulness, I chose this house shaped mini album, with the plan to create an album about being grateful for my home.

I was also sent some patterned papers and stickers from Close To My Heart to work with. These tone-on-tone patterns fit my style perfectly, and I thought the colors worked really well for fall. For my completed album, I used just one of the silver rings to hold the pages together. I wasn't able to work in both rings, since my photos ended up being in the way. So I simply punched holes up near the roof, and added the ring there.

I am grateful for my home. After all, it's where I spend the majority of my time. I decided to focus on four of the main things I do in my home, since I had room for 4 spreads.

The shaped mini album consisted of raw chipboard pages. I started out by tracing the album shape onto several of the patterned papers that I wanted to include, and then traced it onto textured white cardstock as well. And then obviously, I cut them all out ;) I ended up needing 5 patterned paper "houses" and 5 white cardstock "houses".

I then spritzed all of the patterned paper "houses" with white misting spray, and all of the white cardstock "houses" with tan misting spray.

I decided I wanted to emboss the white cardstock "houses" for extra texture, using several different embossing folders. The paper was too big to fit into the folders, but since I knew that I was going to add photos to the white cardstock "houses", I simply embossed the top and bottom separately. There was a small gap, without the embossing, that was later covered by the photos.

After embossing the white cardstock "houses" and letting the mist dry on all pieces, I took them to my sewing machine and machine stitched around the edges of each "house". I thought about just using regular adhesive to adhere the papers to the chipboard album pages. But in the end, I decided to use Mod Podge instead, as I wanted to be sure everything was really secure and in place.

For my photos, I went with either two or four photos for each section. I printed them in small collages, sized to fit across the width of the page. I adhered them to the page using glue dots (my photo paper has a textured backside, so regular adhesive doesn't stick) and then added a thin strip of patterned paper above and below the collage.

I kept with the "home" theme, I added the "home is where I _____" to each spread, filling in what I was focusing on for that page. I went with chipboard alphas from Bella Blvd in white text, since I had plenty of them to complete all of my words (home, love, work, make, relax), and also because they fit perfectly across the width of the page.

I then die cut the word "home" several times, along with the word "grateful" for the cover (and both from Kerri Bradford), from brown cardstock. I used some tiny alpha stickers from Lily Bee to add the "is where i" to each page.

And last, but not least, I added some stickers from Close To My Heart that coordinated with the paper collection. One of the sticker sheets had these words on it, and I was able to pull out a word that tied in with each of my spreads. Like "hooray" for relaxing, "create" for making, "wonder" for working (kids have lots of wonderment about them!), and "laugh" for loving. Then I finished each spread off with a few label stickers, hearts, starts, geotags, etc, and a few coordinating enamels.

There were 4 additional mini albums featured in the article, and you can download the Make It Mini PDF file to see all 5 albums RIGHT HERE.

Comments

[Mendi Yoshikawa]

What an amazing mini album! I love the house shape and how you were able to tie in the word Home into each page. :)

[Theresa]

Wow!! Love this album! Great job.

[Sandy]

Love this album also!

[Raiza]

I love this!