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?

National Cardmaking Day

October 3rd is National Cardmaking Day So I thought I’d share one of my more special cards with you. Hope you enjoy.

Hybrid Card Making for Someone Special

My daughter recently celebrated a birthday, and in what has now become an annual tradition, I flew up to Sydney to spend her birthday weekend with her.

It’s been a difficult year for her and I wanted to make her a card to let her know how much she means to me and how much I admire her.

I used my favourite card making technique…hybrid scrapbooking.

I always enjoy the enormous scope for creativity I get by combining digital with paper elements. I can tailor my digital elements to suit my project by changing the colours, size and even the overall shape.

For this card I used a chipboard concertina mini book as the base and all the digital elements are from my Night over Rhone kit (available free through the Step by Step Digital Scrapbook Program) combined with some papers from Thao Cosgrove’s Art Journal Kit from Scrap Girls.

I used the masking tool to extract the images of Seona from the rest of the photo so that I could feature her. After all , this card is all about her.

Then I desaturated the background of the photos  and blended them into the background papers by reducing the opacity a little. That way I got a silhouette of Seona whilst still keeping some context of her surroundings.

The arched window from Night over Rhone is one of my favourite elements and it is very easy to change the shape and size of it so that it fits the arched shape of the chipboard page. And there’s something special about putting a photo behind a window frame I think. It sort of gives the idea of looking in on a private moment.

It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of flowers and brads, both digital and ‘real life’ so no card of mine would be complete unless I managed to incorporate some into the design.

Seona was very happy with the card. She said, “Oooh, my first ‘book’ card!”

I and I realised that I hadn’t made her a card in book form before.  She has a significant birthday coming up next year, her first significant one since I started card making, so I’ll really be pulling out the stops for that.

And you can back it in that whatever I decide to do I’ll be using hybrid scrapbooking to do it.

Other Related Articles:

Hybrid Scrapbooking – The Best of Both Worlds

Hybrid Scrapbooking – What’s it all about?