CrazyDaisy

September Mini Tutorial

Katie here! If you’re a Crazy Daisy regular, I think you know by now that I love making supplies my own. One of the best ways to do this, I’ve found, is to challenge myself to look at the monthly mini in a new way. This time, I thought, “What haven’t I done before? What would look cute with this album?” Pair those questions with the desire to use a piece of cork board I had laying around, and you get an idea!

To create the two mini cork boards found in my album, follow the steps below:

1. Separate your pages. Order them all by size. For the cork boards, we’ll only be using three medium bracket and three large bracket pages. So: Not the front and back cover, nor the two little bracket pages.
2. Decide what shapes you want your boards to be and draw them in with pencil. One of my cork boards is a thick, rectangular shape, while the other is thin and much smaller. You’ll want to use the heaviest of each set of pages to be the backing of the cork board (the chipboard won’t buckle under the glue and you won’t have problems with pushing thumbtacks completely through). Take one of the two lighter pages of each set and draw rectangles on them. You can either freehand — which is what I did before straightening my edges up with a ruler where I needed to — or you can trace a template. Then, using an X-Acto knife, cut the shapes out so that you are left with two frames. Use the frames as a guide to trace onto the remaining light pages, leaving the heavy pages intact (they’ll only provide backing).

3. Use the center blocks which you cut out with your craft knife as a guide to determine how big the pieces of cork need to be. Tracing around them with a Sharpie works best for this part. Then, cut the cork to size.

4. Adhere the two cardstock frame pages from each set together, and then back them with their respective chipboard pages. Double sided tape works best, but you could also use liquid glue — if you do, make sure to allow the glue to set properly by placing the boards underneath a stack of heavy books; otherwise, they’ll warp.

5. Using strong liquid glue — Elmer’s Craft Bond is awesome, but Aleene’s Tacky Glue would also work very well — adhere the cork in place. The pieces should fit right into their little frames.

6. Seal the edges of the boards by using Mod Podge. This is optional, but I feel it makes things look more cohesive!

7. Next, I decorated my pages by using foam stamps and yellow acrylic paint, stamping words which remind me of fall.

8. Decorate the rest of your pages to follow suit, and there you have it! Your own, customized, spiffy fall mini. Now all you need to is embellish! Have fun.