Scraps Of Mind

5 Tips for making a Great Mini-Album

It was my daughter’s 30^th birthday yesterday.

Naturally I required some intensive therapy to come to terms with this. But once I had gotten over my “where did the last 30 years go” shock I decided that I had to make something a bit special for her in the way of a card. Last year I made a pretty spiffy concertina card which she loved and said “Oooh, my first ‘book’ card!” That made me realise that I had never made an album just for her to keep before.

So I decided to make a mini album covering her last 30 years.

Now when I make a mini-album I like to do it from the ground up; making the pages and cover rather than buying a pre-made chipboard album. I gave myself plenty of time, as I usually do. And I managed to blow most of it away leaving me with a last minute rush, as I usually do. But I was quite pleased with the finished result.

Click on image to see the pages inside

 Making a mini album is a really fun thing to do. It’s great to create a whole album in one project and the smaller size helps to make the project less daunting.  If you have never made one why not give it a go? You don’t have to make the whole thing from scratch like me. You can buy premade chipboard albums that you can cover and embellish to make a fabulous album.  They make wonderful and really appreciated gifts for the special people in your life. Here are a few tips to get you started. 

5 tips for making great mini-albums

1.  Find a theme to link your pages together. This can be a color scheme, a scrapbooking style, a specific topic or anything that gives a sense of continuity through the pages and helps the album to tell a story. Using a combination of theme ideas will also help to reinforce the continuity. In this album I used papers from the Papermania Chatsworth Collection to maintain a color scheme. I used the same font and style for the titles on all the pages and I themed all the titles by making them follow a similar pattern for my Seona Days album: Early Days, Dress-up Days, School Days, BirthDays, HoliDays.

2.  Choose smaller, simple patterns or plains for your background papers. Now I have to admit that I didn’t strictly follow this rule. Several of the patterns in the paper pack I had chosen were a bit on the largish side. So I chose mainly simple pastels with dots for my pages and interspersed them with a few patterned papers in muted tones so they don’t overpower the photos.

3.  Add texture and dimension. Following on from the last tip you can make up for the lack of pattern in your papers by adding texture. The papers I chose for Seona’s album had a sort of a linen texture that I really loved. But you can add your own texture by putting your papers through an embossing machine such as a CuttleBug. And a bit of lumpy bumpy doesn’t hurt either. Generally your mini-album will only have a small number of pages. So you can probably afford to add a bit of height to your embellishing. Foam tape is my best friend. If you’re doing a digital album then try out some interesting drop shadows and bevels.

4.  Go easy on the embellishments. Because your mini–album pages are so much smaller than your regular scrapbook pages you need to be careful that you don’t over clutter them with embellishments. Try to pick smaller embellishments that won’t overpower the page. And I also like to reinforce the continuity by repeating the same embellishments throughout the album if possible.

5.  And most of all, put your love into it. Mini-albums (especially ones you do for other people) are usually a sort of capsule for an idea or an event or, like Seona’s album, a life story. That makes them a bit extra special. Let that feeling shine through in the journaling you write and the themes you choose.

As usual for me, this album was a hybrid scrapbooking project where I combined digital scrapbooking techniques with paper scrapbooking elements. One of the great benefits of this approach is that I can manipulate my photos and digital embellishments to perfectly fit my smaller pages and coordinate with my color scheme. I couldn’t decide on just 3 or 4 photos for the BirthDays page so I created the photo collage digitally, scanned in a background  from my paper pack and mounted the collage on it so I could keep all the fuzzy edges and just cut around the paper matt.

And yes, Seona loved it.

Hybrid Scrapbooking a 50th Card

I’ve just made this 50^th birthday card for my brother and I thought I’d share it with you.

It’s a Hybrid scrapbooking card made using both paper scrapbooking and digital scrapbooking techniques and I must confess, this is my absolute favourite form of scrapbooking. It combines the touchy-feely satisfaction of working with paper with the convenience, versatility and virtually unlimited paper and embellishment options of digital scrapbooking.

I’m pretty chuffed with how it turned out. What do you think?

I’ve used this template before when I made a 50^th Wedding Anniversary card for my Aunt and Uncle. And if you want to try it out you can download the template here. If you want to use it for digital cards just delete the white background and clip your digital papers to the outline shape.

When I make hybrid scrapbook cards I usually do the design on my computer first so I can play around with ideas. Even if I’m not intending to use digital papers I’ll usually pick a digital paper that’s similar to the ‘real’ one that I intend to use for the purpose of the design. And I’ll use digital elements to stand in for the ‘real life’ ones I’m planning to use. Things like brads and ribbons etc.

Once the design is done I work out which of the digital elements I’m going to use on the card and then print them out. It’s easy to change the color of them if they don’t quite coordinate with my other elements.

On this card I clipped the patterned digital paper I wanted to use (Cheryl Barber’s Etc Collection) to the template and then printed out the whole of the digital design on satin finish photo paper. Then I glued it onto cardstock which I’d printed with the template shape. I cut a slit in the card to thread the ribbon through on the inside before I glued the designed card to the card stock. If I was going to use ‘real’ brads I would also have fixed them to the papers before gluing onto the cardstock.

Then I printed several of the elements of the card separately onto satin photo paper, cut them out and adhered them to the card with foam tape to add further dimension. This worked particularly well with the focal photo because it meant I was able to run the real ribbon over the frame and under the photo.

Like I said earlier, I love the way hybrid scrapbooking combines the best of both of the scrapbooking worlds I love. If you haven’t tried it yourself I urge you to give it a go. It’s the perfect scrapbooking marriage.

And if you’re nervous about the idea of the digital scrapbooking part, just click on the banner below and check out the selection of Beginner Tutorials from Step by Step Digital Scrapbook to help you get started.

Other Related Articles:

50^th Anniversary Card and Template

What is Hybrid Scrapbooking?

AZZA Scrapbooking

Have you heard of AZZA Scrapbooking?

Well I hadn’t until a few months ago when my friend Marla (who isn’t even a scrapbooker) worded me up about it.

Seems AZZA is a European style of scrapbooking. The AZZA heartland seems to be France and Belgium. And its focus is all about the photos and less about the embellishments.

Typically AZZA scrapbook layouts use multiple photos which are cut into shapes that fit into each other neatly. Often special templates are used to create the shapes needed for a pleasing design.

Usually there isn’t any embellishment other than a border which is mostly drawn with a pen or paintbrush. Simplicity is the key and all attention is given to the photos. And the photos themselves become the design of the layout.

It’s an interesting style and makes quite a contrast from the American style of scrapbooking which most of us practice. And I do confess that whilst I’m not a heavy collage scrapbooker, I do like my embellishments and accents.

But I was intrigued by the AZZA scrapbooking style and thought I’d like to give it a try. I wasn’t all that keen on all the photo cutting (I knew from the outset that that way there be dragons). And I wasn’t keen on the expense of buying the special templates.

So the obvious choice was . . .

Digital AZZA Scrapbooking!

One of the joys of digital for me is that you can replicate pretty much anything that you can create in paper scrapbooking at little or no cost. And mistakes are fixed by just a click of the reverse button.

So I decided to give digital AZZA a try and use it to create my album for the trip I took last November, cruising across Europe by river.

Click on the layout to download the PSD template

I made some digital templates in Photoshop Elements and dragged my photos on, positioned and resized them and then used the clipping mask layer to crop them to the size of the template.

I made the borders by choosing a shape from the cookie cutter and then Ctrl-Click to select the layer and doing Edit>Stroke Outline on a new layer. Simply delete the original shape layer and you’re left with the outline border which you can resize and manipulate however you want.

The templates were quite easy to make using the Cookie Cutter shapes and the Marquee Tool for the more geometric shapes. And the spaces between were created using the same Edit>Stroke Outline technique around the photos, Selecting the border layer  and pressing the Delete key on the relevant layers to create the space.

I then just added a small shadow to the photos so they look like they’re stuck on the page; a low key title, some journaling and we’re done.

I quite like how they’re turning out. And best of all, it cost me nothing!

So I think I’ll be doing more of this Digital AZZA Scrapbooking, although I can’t see me becoming a total convert. I couldn’t bear to give up my flowers and brads… both digital and real.

How about you? Have you tried AZZA Scrapbooking before using traditional paper techniques? How do you like it?

And what do you think of digital AZZA scrapbooking? Is it something you ‘d like to try?

You can download the template I made for the layout above by clicking on the layout above. The template is in PSD format.

Let me know how you go.