Edited: All of the photos for this post were removed, as Grace’s album was accepted for publication. The next time you see the album, it will be in the pages of Scrapbook Trends. You go girl!
Some times the hardest part of creating a layout or a mini-book is getting started. I know that for me, as soon as I dive into the process, things start to flow and come together. It’s the diving in that I struggle with. I over think. I over plan. And then I start to have stress. So, what we though we’d do for you today is offer you a look at a mini-book project from start to finish. Grace was wonderful enough to be our guest blogger and invited us into her process of diving into creating a mini-book from start to finish. Enjoy!
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Time capsule mini-book
By Grace Tolman
Hello everyone and welcome to a start to finish post from me. *smile*
I really enjoyed working with the Chatterbox mini album that came in our Crazy Daisy August kit. It was cute to be used as is without adding too much embellishment but at the same time leaves enough room for personalization.
1. I’m a big sketch person. I like to visualize what I’m going to end up with before I even start. It’s always great to have a foundation. I don’t ALWAYS follow the plan to the “T” but it’s still good to have an idea of where I’m going to take this project to.
2. Next I gather all my supplies, which in this case are small pictures of me, the minibook and everything that’s leftover from my August kit.
3. Then I print out my journaling title in the computer using one of my fave type fonts (Adler).
4. After that I take out one of the butterflies from the mini-book. I’m going to dress up my canvas bag with that butterfly piece. After easily taking it out from the book, I set it aside.
5. Then I start working on the book itself. I first cut the journaling title/prompts into strips. I trimmed them down as well.
6. I then start assembling my book. I first lay my journaling strips and pictures on the books inside pages. I just lay them first without adhering anything. This gives me the freedom to move around the pieces until I feel good about them.
7. At this point I decide to add some pattern papers, so I go with the My Mind’s eye paper in the kit. I punched out a scallop border on the edge first before I trimmed the strip that I needed.
8. After moving things around a bit. I decided that it works for me and so I start adhering things. I decided to use the orange paper strips to go under my pictures.
9. Then I start adding my title. Because the project/book is small I had to use smaller letter stickers, so it won’t overpower the rest of the pages. After going through my personal letter stash, I decided on using the tiny alphas from Making Memories.
10. I had one picture that I wanted to put over the transparent butterfly page in the book so I adhere that with glue dots.
11. After getting all the pictures and journaling strips adhered, I start adding my handwritten journaling. Since the theme of the mini-book was time capsule, I chose journaling that would be related to the “me” now. Examples of my questions where: things I can’t live without; things I can’t stop talking/learning about; how much things cost at this time; and my personal testimony. I also added my stats like what age I am right now, address and people in my family. This book is great for your own time capsule or you can also give it as a gift, leaving space for the recipient to write their own thoughts in there.
12. After getting all the important stuff on there (pictures + words) I go on the fun part…and that is embellishing my pages and book. I start from the front and work my way to the back. For the front of the book, I decide to use the sun sticker in the Heidi Swapp sticker sheet, matted it with the orange cardstock (also included in the kit) and trimmed it off with a scallop scissor.
I added a foil butterfly over it and added pearls (from my stash) to finish off the accent.
13. The most fun part for me about embellishing is how much stuff I can layer over each other. In the next page I layered a leftover star cut out from pattern paper, sticker, rub ons and button.
14. I used a thick ribbon from the kit to make a tab over my title page.
15. To finish off the tab, I added a button. Since the button I wanted have that tab in the back, I decided to cut it off with pliers. I like my buttons flat, but since I couldn’t’ take the entire loop out, I added pop up dots to it so I can adhere it without being too bumpy.
16. Another favorite thing for me right now is applying rub ons onto white cardstock first then cutting the image out so I can layer it onto the page with pop up dots.
17. Here I just added a button (from the kit) with a ribbon paper threaded through it to fancy up a butterfly in one of the pages.
18. Here I add some more rub ons applied to cardstock first.
19. I wanted to incorporate the gorgeous flowers in the kit but realized that they’re just too big, so I can trim them off so it’ll match the size with the rest of my embellishment
20. After a few looks at the book, I felt satisfied with how it turned out so I worked on the canvas bag next. I first trace the butterfly onto a cardstock. I’m going to spray some glimmer mist onto the canvas bag fro more color so I wanted an empty white space where the butterfly page will go.
21. I cut out the butterfly and layer that on top of the canvas bag then I sprayed it with copper glimmer mist.
Once I take off the butterfly cut out, here’s what it looks like…
Set it aside to dry completely.
22. Then I decided to make a title page for my mini-book so I played around with more leftovers from the August kit. I decided on using that relax sticker from the HS sticker sheet but using only the shaped border of the sticker.
I traced the sticker onto the orange cardstock then trimmed to size. I also added rub ons and letter stickers to the title block before adding pop up dots to adhere it to the butterfly piece.
And here’s the result. The green pearls (from my own stash) were also added at the last minute because I felt it was still missing something.
23. Then I worked on a little bit more on the canvas bag. I drew the butterfly image with a black pen.
24. Added some adhesive behind the butterfly block and adhered on the center of the bag at an angle so you can see the traced butterfly image behind it.
25. I added the felt thickers (included in the kit) to personalize my book at the back and added the date.
And after a couple of hours, here’s what it looks like…..
Hope you enjoyed my little start to finish article. And if you decide to follow my lead and make your own “time capsule” mini-book with your butterfly book please share. I love to see how yours turned out.
Till next time,
Grace
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