Creating a mini book
By Katie Turner
Hi everyone, Katie here. I hope you’ve all ordered your kits and are super excited to play with them! I know I was beyond stoked to receive the kit in the mail and sift through all the goodies. Wow, that’s all I can say. Did you know my favorite colors are green and brown? I’m really on a yellow kick lately, too, so needless to say, the March 2010 kit had me covered! I’m particularly fond of the mini from My Mind’s Eye (green flocking? Check. Swirls galore? Check. An awesome silhouette of a bird? Check. Cream chipboard pages? Check!!!), Crate Paper’s fun, doodled journaling spots, the printed ribbon, the shimmery cardstock … Wait, if I list everything, I’ll be here forever. Instead, allow me to stop rambling and share a more visual post with you.
I have a certain approach to my mini albums and how I create each page in them. I’m sure most of you do, too, but I thought it might be fun if I gave you a peek at my process/a tutorial of sorts to ponder over. Here goes:
With this particular mini, I thought it’d be fun to use lace cardstock that I had sitting around in my stash as a base for my pages. I really love paint and it adds such a gorgeous, handmade feel to whatever project I’m working on, so I couldn’t resist it. As you can see, my stenciling wasn’t perfect — I like being able to see little brush strokes here and there, but if you don’t, no worries: You can always use some removable/temporary adhesive (tape runners are nice) to hold your cardstock down while you paint over it. I chose to mix brown, green, and yellow together to form a color that’s similar to the flocking. I don’t like to mix my paint completely; I have always liked to see the individual colors in different places, but to each her own! Anything goes. 
Notice the slight tear and the yellow spot? That was me experimenting. I do that a lot and if something doesn’t work out or I decide against it (like I did here), I just cover it up. It’s a great way to stretch your creativity.
Next, I made a stencil out of an old label sticker I had by sticking the outline of it (or the “waste” — the part that’s left after the actual sticker is gone!) to a piece of cardstock and cutting out the middle. I used this shape throughout the album to help create a flow from page to page. You can use any shape you’d like; I just happen to like brackets and like using homemade stencils as well. I then grabbed a sheet of paper and traced the shape on it four times before cutting it out and then hand stitching just inside the edges with brown thread to create a nice accent for each embellishment.
Then, I laid the embellishments out as shown above. I turned the center shape on its side for visual interest — everything lined up straight in a row can get boring. I attached the embellishments with glue dots once I was satisfied with their placement.
For this particular page, I used two mock photo booth strips to display photos of one of my favorite houses in the city where I live. (By the way — the photo booth strip is from here).
I just manipulated it in PhotoShop and cropped out the existing photos.) Visual interest played another role in my decision to slightly overlap the strips. I feel they look better that way than when placed side by side.
Finally, the only thing left to do was embellish! I slid part of the printed transparency with the blue design on it underneath one of the paper shapes, plucked a teal pearl from the Prima swirls and glued it to the center of the pretty green button, made a paper flower and embellished it with some blue trim I had on my desk, cut the “One of a kind” sentiment off one end of the journaling card included in the kit, and added the journaling stickers. Voila! That’s my process in a nutshell, although I switch things up here and there.
If you’re interested in seeing the rest of the mini… Here you go:
It’s all about the city I live in and the love I have for the beautiful, old buildings downtown. I am definitely a city girl! The last page features lyrics by Adele, whose song of the same name inspired my mini. If you haven’t heard the song yet… Well, you must! Click here to watch her music video on YouTube!
Well, that’s it for me. I hope you enjoyed my post as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you! Please let me know what you think in the comments. Till next time, have fun creating!
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