Ancestry Mini Album – with pictures!

I generally love the wide variety of vintage design paper collections out there, but some really stand out. Like Ancestry, an older collection by K&Company. I enjoyed working with its warm, nostalgic colors and patterns before, when I created my large family tree mini album back in 2013. I also used it to create the cute micro album in a box I showed you earlier this year.

And most recently I decided to give it one last go and use up all of the remaining paper I had left to create one more mini album. So with pleasure I present to you my Ancestry Mini Album – with pictures!
For as a bonus, I added photos to the album to give you an idea of how a scrapbook mini album looks with actual pictures in it! I decided to work with pictures from my own family tree, you know, the really old black & white ones, hidden treasures dugg up from my parents’ old family albums.

So enjoy the video and don’t forget to like & subscribe! 🙂

If you’d like to create this album yourself, I recommend the tutorial for my Life’s a Picnic mini album. There are some minor differences in page design and album closure but its basic design is quite similar. If you’d like to do an ancestry themed album, there’s one more Heirloom kit available in my shop!

You can check out the video for the Life’s a Picnic album here, in case you’re considering to buy the tutorial. And for another variation on this design – to give you some inspiration – you can check out my Christmas mini album too.

 

 

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Twice Upon A Springtime: Two Cute Little Minis

Continuing from last week’s one-sheet-challengeI came up with another challenge for myself – again, in the spirit of Spring and everything New 🙂

This time it was: How to Create Two Ring-bound Mini Albums out of Four Sheets of Design Paper (and some cardstock)

I don’t know about you but there are some paper collections I only ever bought a couple of sheets of. Like in my case, the Once Upon a Springtime collection by Graphic 45. (At the time I was so happy when I had managed to scavenge a few sheets of this wondrously lovely collection from the hidden corners of our local scrap shop. If only I had known they would reboot this entire collection all over again in 2015! 🙂 )

Another example of owning only a few sheets of a particular paper collection: sometimes I’ve got some sheets leftover from some large project.

Well, what to do with these if you’re not in the mood for cards? Here’s what: create two adorable little minis, and create them in two versions: a photo version and a notebook version.

You’ll need only four 12×12″ sheets of double-sided design paper and eight sheets of A4 cardstock. Plus some embellishments, and of course some tools and crafting supplies.

These little albums are relatively easy and fairly quickly to make, and they make great gifts! For instance, I filled one with photos and gifted it to my mother for Easter. The other I turned into a birthday gift for a colleague, who would now have a great little notebook to keep in her purse, with still room for a few treasured pictures if she wishes.

Like this idea? Great, check out my video below! And if you’d like to create some yourself – admit it, you have several four-sheet-sets left in your stash!! – hop on over to my Etsy shop to get the tutorial! It will be available from April 8th, it has 37 pages and 99 pictures and guides you through the process of creating the mini albums step-by-step.

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Princess Paper Bag Mini Album

I created this paper bag album with Prima’s soft-colored, romantic Princess design paper. I added several Prima flowers from the Princess collection and others, did some die-cutting and used a cutapart sheet from the Delight collection, also by Prima. The one you see on the front of the album (see picture) I printed myself, choosing the sentiment, the font and font color and size. So you don’t need a stamp to add some sentiments, printing is a fine and very versatile alternative! (Tip!)

Of course there’s some of my scrap mats in there as well 🙂

Enjoy the video!

For the basic construction of this album I used a tutorial by Kathy Orta, which you can check out on Youtube. The construction of the spine is of my own design however.

You can check out my Christmas paper bag album here.

Neverending Memories – A Folio Album (new design!)

I’m very pleased to share with you today a unique design that I recently finished. I’m calling it a Folio Album, and this particular one I dubbed Neverending Memories. It’s a great design that allows you to store (or take with you) your piece as a neat mini album (the album aspect of the folio album), while folding it out on your table when you want to showcase your photos in one fairly large but still very manageable overview (the folio part).

I used 17 sheets of 12×12″ decorative paper to create it, which keeps it well within range of one pack of design paper – keeping it reasonably affordable to create. I used the stunningly teal Winterbird design paper collection by Tilda. You’ll also need some cardstock of course, as well as some embellishments of your choice.

It’s somewhat easier to create than an actual mini album, since there’s no binding of pages, nor any chipboard that needs to be turned into an album cover & spine. I really enjoyed designing it, and had great fun creating it!

And: I went the extra mile and wrote a tutorial for you all 🙂 . It has 120 pages and holds 430 pictures! You can check it out in my Etsy shop, where it’s offered as a direct download pdf file.

Have fun watching the video and let me know what you think!

Want to know what other people created with the tutorial? Check out the fanpage and see for yourself! 🙂

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Gift idea: Christmas Paper Bag Album

Before you read any further: this album is for sale for a special opening price, so please check it out on my Showroom page! (International customers: please pay attention to the fact that international shipping fees will have to be added).

Tis the Season, yea! 🙂 I haven’t got my Christmas tree yet, but nevertheless it’s that time of the year again, which means holiday-themed projects for crafters all over the world! Soooo many gorgeous new Christmas collections and I haven’t even bought a single one this year. Not because I don’t want to create anything for Christmas, on the contrary. But since I bought like a gazillion Christmas collections last year, I’m afraid I’ll be not-buying any new Christmas collections the coming years until I’ve used up the ones I already own…. (Right. Like that’s going to happen! But: at least this year it is! 🙂 )

Anyway, here’s a so-called paper bag mini album, the pages of which are basically created from paper bags – and some cardstock. I really love this type of album, for it requires less basic construction than the usual cardstock albums, so you can relatively quickly move on to decorating and embellishing – which, you know, is grrrrreat! 🙂

The paper collection I used is North Countryby Prima Marketing, plus some separate sheets from other collections. I also used this paper line for my Christmas cards this year.

Mini Album “2Die4” – an idea to store your dies

I haven’t been die-cutting from the beginning of my scrapbooking adventures (back in November 2012), but ever since I’ve been trying my hand at it, my stash of dies seems to keep growing no matter what I do… It didn’t take too long before I was in need of a handy and practical way to store my dies, preferably without having to save all the packaging.

I figured: why not create a mini album with magnetic pages to hold all of them!

So I got to work, stumbling along while experimenting, encountering several impediments and difficulties. I finished the project nevertheless, although the end result is not the most esthetically pleasing of projects.

I’m sharing this with you anyway, for now you can all learn from my mistakes, apply my tips and create your own very practical and no doubt far more pretty storage minis! 🙂

Have fun, and let me know what you think!

Boys’ Heroes Ultra Mini Album

This was a great project for me, for I got to get my Geek on! 🙂

I created this Cinch-bound mini album for Merijn, the 8-year-old son of a friend. A couple of weeks ago I also created one for his older brother Thijmen, and because they are brothers I really wanted each album to have a unique look and feel, so that each boy would really have their own very personal album.

Whereas Thijmen’s album was all about natural history, with wildlife, animal foot prints and dinosaurs, the one I created for Merijn sports several superheroes and other boy favorites. (Of course I consulted their mother to find out what each boy liked.) The paper I used is That’s My Boy by Echo Park, the 6×6 inch pad.

Anyway, it was great fun to create this album and in the process come up with an alternative use for your Marvel comics calendar  – which of course you would have lying around if you’re even half the geek I am. 😉

Okay, so here’s the video. After which, please take a moment to like & subscribe. And, if by any chance you’re curious about my geeky side, try my other blog, Comics & Gadgets! (or its original Dutch version, Gadgets and Geekery.) And, you know, like & subscribe, or just say Hi in the comment section 🙂

 

 

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WonderFall – a 42-Layout Cinch Mini!

Remember the little autumn-themed ultra mini album I showed you a couple of blog posts ago? I had created it with the leftover scraps of a larger, regular-sized mini album that I was working on. Well, I’ve finished that one and I’m very happy to share the results! 🙂

This 6×6 mini album is Cinch-bound, it has TEN page assemblies with 42 (!) photo layouts, a lot of diecuts by me, plus a lot of extra embellishments. The page construction was very very simple, so I’ve incorporated a short page tutorial as well.

The paper collection I used is Autumn Song by Bo Bunny – of which I totally forgot to film a walkthrough before I started the project, but there’s a link to Amazon below should you be interested in this collection, which is absolutely gorgeous and perfect for this time of year!

This mini album is all about Shalem, my French lop who passed away two years ago. So I decorated the front cover of the album with a picture of him, but before I had the photo printed, I did some digital editing first! I cut Shalem from his original background (the grass in my garden) and then pasted him into a fantasy fall landscape that I found on the internet somewhere. In the lower right corner I digitally wrote his name and dates of birth/death. So before we go to the video, here’s a close-up of the album’s front cover:

So enjoy the video and please leave a comment to let me know what you think! Also, click the Like button…. 😉

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Autumn Time Ultra Mini Album (with pictures!) + page tutorial

Hi guys & gals!

Well, you’re here, at the final part of September Mini Album Month on my blog! (which simply means I uploaded a mini album video every Sunday this September, instead of the usual once a month). In case you missed the other three, just start here and work your way back up to here 😉

This ultra mini album is a bit smaller than the other ultra minis I’ve created so far. It’s completely of my own design – a design that is actually so simple that I included a short but sufficient tutorial in the video below.

What was new for me was the layout technique: I filled the mini album with pictures, then added all kinds of cuteness like diecuts, brads, dimensional stickers etc. So hardly any interaction, no pockets, no tags – instead, lots of embellishments and decorations, on a foundation of Bo Bunny’s gorgeous Autumn Song collection.

Since this is the final part of Mini Album Month, I also included an overview of all four mini album projects of this month. I really enjoyed showing you a mini album every week, and I really hope you did too! 🙂

 

A Natural History Adventure Ultra Mini Album


Hello, and welcome to part 2 of September Mini Album Month on my blog! (which simply means I’ll upload a mini album video every Sunday, instead of the usual once a month). We started off Mini Album Month with a sweet baby girl mini – if you’ve missed it, you might wanna catch up 😉

This week it’s all about the ultra mini album I created for the son of my colleague & friend, who would be turning ten soon and his mother wanted him to have his very own 10-year-old’s-mini. She told me that of all the things he liked, he loved animals, nature, sea shells, and Minecraft the most. A fun challenge for me, for I had to imagine myself a little boy and try to answer the question: what kind of mini would I like?

I came up with an album that fit the ultra mini album category, by which I mean a type of album that sits right between the regular mini album and the micro album, both in size and complexity. Bo Bunny’s Trail Mix collection perfectly fit the natural history theme I had in mind.
By the way, I’ve shown you an ultra mini album some blog posts ago, so check it out for a Flora & Fauna-themed one.

For your convenience I included tutorials for the basic construction of the pages of this mini, so stay tuned for those in the second half of the video.

Last but not least: during the page tutorial I mention the magnet closure and ribbon pull fairly briefly, based on the assumption that you guys already know how to create those. If you don’t, however, I recommend one of my earlier tutorials, where I go over them step by step.

Have fun and let me know what you think!

 

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Sweet New Baby Girl mini album

Welcome to September Mini Album Month on my blog:
I’ll upload a mini album video every Sunday, instead of the usual once a month!

We start off with a lovely, very girly, very pink mini album, which was commissioned by a grandmother, impatiently awaiting the arrival of her new granddaughter into this world. 🙂

The album is 15×17 cm (6×6.75 inches) and sports two paper collections: Lullaby by Kaisercraft, and a brandless A4 pad simply called Birth. To add a little contrast to all of this pink, I used a yellow distress ink to ink around all of the edges: Scattered Straw by Tim Holtz.

For the photo mats I used my so-called scrap mats throughout the album, which proves once again how much extra paper real estate you can generate by using all of your scraps.
As a bonus, I added a pair of the sweetest little baby girl socks!

So check out the video – and if you don’t want to miss out on my other September mini albums (which you don’t, of course 😉 ), simply subscribe to my channel by filling out your email adress at the top of my home page.

 

 

Click here for my other baby projects!

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Country Garden Gatefold Keepsake Album Deluxe

So, here’s my latest gatefold Keepsake Album De Luxe, and a pretty large one: about 8,5 x 11 inches, which is almost A4. It was commissioned by a lady who had asked me to incorporate some pictures of her dogs, which gives me the opportunity to show you some “complete layouts”, i.e. at least some of the pages and tags have photographs – plus embellishments.

The paperline is Country Garden by Bo Bunny, a somewhat older design stack but timeless and a very pretty summer line!

If you’d like to create an album like this yourself, check out the tutorial for my Springtime Dreams Keepsake Album, for it has the same basic design!

If you liked this, you may like my other gatefold albums deluxe as well!

Thanks for watching, please like & subscribe!

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