Be Your Creative Self – an 8×8″ Page Gatefold Keepsake Album

Hi you all!

I’m so happy to be able to share my latest mini album design! It’s an 8½ x 8½” (22 x 22 cm) gatefold keepsake album, which I’ve titled Be Your Creative Self –  which sentiment is totally inspired by the paper collection I’ve been working with: World’s Fair, the glorious 2015 collection by Graphic 45.

This is a luxurious gatefold keepsake album, a square one this time – the others have all been in portrait mode. Its pages are a little bit larger than 8×8″, so that you can work with those great 8×8″ design paper pads.

This Be Your Creative Self album contains twelve interactive page layouts, including the inside covers. It has a magnetized closure and has a very crisp and clean cover, no embellishments at all, to really showcase this magnificent paper line.

It was a heck of a job to get it done, but soooo, so much fun! If you’d like to create this great album yourself, a tutorial is available on Etsy, with over 400 clear pictures of the step-by-step process!

Enjoy the video and pictures below, and let me know what you think in the comment section!

 

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Family Tree Mini: Remember This Moment Forever (filled with photos!)

For this Family Tree Mini I used Echo Park’s Reflections paper line, which I combined with a sheet here or a few die-cuts there of two other collections, which I mention in the video.

The album sports a belly band and ten interactive page layouts, including the inside covers. The page designs are based on my Life’s a Picnic mini album – it keeps amazing me how great a difference the simple use of another paper collection makes for the tone & atmosphere of your mini!

As a bonus I filled it up with pictures – for this was part of the commission – which I know always helps viewers to get a better idea of how such minis can be filled with pictures and the effects you can add by die-cutting, glitter-gluing and stickering 🙂 .

In case you’d like to make an album like this, please check out my tutorial on Etsy – which gives you all of these page designs except the family tree page, plus four more! As for how to make the final page – the actual family tree page – simply watch the video, and/or the video of my own personal Family Tree Mini, in which I explain the (very simple) creative process.

 

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To My Sweetheart – A Romantic Mini Album

Hello my sweet readers!

Although most people in the Netherlands don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d post a romantically themed mini album today anyway. 😉
This album was commissioned by a young man in Singapore who wanted to surprise his girlfriend. He wanted it to be romantic – with pinks, flowers and some love-themed ephemera, etc.

So I chose Kaisercraft’s Oh So Lovely paper collection, which is perfect for precisely such a mini album! It has florals, pinks, wood patterns and some great sentiments!

The album is a pocketstyle mini with 5×5″ (12,5 x 12,5 cm) pages.  It sports ten interactive page layouts, including the inside covers, and four large photo mats. I decorated it with the O So Lovely Collectables die-cutsthe ATC cards of the collection (called Captured Moments – Pretty Little Things) and some decorative elements from other brands on the front cover and throughout the album.

For the page designs I mainly followed my Life’s a Picnic mini album tutorial – which by the way has 14 interactive pages so you’ll get 4 extra page designs if you purchase the tutorial!

So enjoy the video, and don’t forget to check out the close-ups below of the two Oh So Lovely cards I created with the same paper collection! 🙂

For those of you who celebrate it, have fun preparing for Valentine’s Day 🙂

 

 

Two Oh So Lovely cards:

 

New Design: Removable Folio Album

Happy New Year everyone! I’m very happy to be able to start this new year by sharing with you my first new design of 2016: a Removable Folio Album! 🙂

This folio can house 60 pictures, folds in and out like an accordian and… can be completely removed from its cover to grant maximum freedom of movement! As a bonus feature, the cover can fold a full 360 degrees!

If you’d like to create it yourself, check out the tutorial in my Etsy shop!

I used the Mimosa paper collection by S.E.I., which is a beautiful, bright and warm design paper that reminded me of spring and summer.

Enjoy the video, and let me know what you think in the comment section!

 

December Deluge 1: Quick Mini Album “Caramel Christmas”

Hi guys!

This December month I’ll post many projects on my blog, to give you some inspiration and ideas for your Christmas projects – and also to help you spend your holiday time creatively. This week, Part 1 of this December Deluge of creative ideas 🙂

I’ve got a cute little Christmas mini album to share with you all: it’s kind of a mini mini album. For with its 4⅛ x 5⅛” (10,5 x 13 cm) it’s not quite micro yet, but smaller than average nonetheless. It’s fairly easy to make, for each page has the same design, and there’s only four pages.

I’m calling this one Caramel Christmas, mainly because of the color scheme of the paper pad I was using (some nameless Dutch brand) – it just reminded me of Christmas sweets like toffee, or coffee candy. Or caramel! 🙂

Both the album’s size and its small number of pages guarantee that you’ll only need one 6×6″ design paper pad btw – probably only about half at that.

All in all this is what you might call back to basics, or perhaps Mini Album 101 🙂 If you’ve never created a mini album before, I hope this one inspires you to try your hand at it after all! No time like the present right? 🙂 And if you’d like to know how to create this, you can check out the tutorial in my shop – which has 60 pages and 126 pictures.

Enjoy the video & pics below!

Btw, as stated above,  I’ll be posting a lot more Christmas projects this month, so stay tuned!
Next up: December Deluge pt. 2 – A 1-sheet Micro Wallet!

 

 

 

8×8 Mini Album: Lucky Dog

The challenge I set myself for this months mini album was to design an 8×8″ album that would perfectly accomodate a Graphic 45 collection. So not just the design paper, but also the many extras that come with such a collection: the journalling cards, flowers, chipboard pieces, stickers, tags and pockets. One of my main goals was to use as little 12×12-sized design paper as possible. And I succeeded (yea!), for I only used 1 sheet of 12×12 design paper, namely for the back cover!

I also wanted to create a wire-bound mini, for I hadn’t done one of those in a while and there are certain advantages to the page design: you don’t have to create pocket pages for there is no hidden hinge binding. And this means: less bulky!

So I got to work with my Raining Cats and Dogs collection – what a glorious color scheme, and what a treat to see a nineteentwenties translation of a pets theme! Also, you can turn your scraps into awesome scrap mats, and in this blog post‘s free video tutorial I show you how to do that.

Since I created this particular album for my mother – with her dog as the main subject of the album – I can show video footage of the album both with and without pictures, so you can get an idea of how pictures could be incorporated in this design.

There’s a tutorial waiting for you in my Etsy shop – I hope you’ll like it, for this album sports many new page designs!

Enjoy the video and pics below, and see you soon!

 

 

Double-Stacked Mini Album (new!): Celebrate Every Day

It’s always super fun to design new mini albums! This time, I created an album with two sets of pages, one above the other. Hence, a double-stacked mini album 😉Almost all pages offer new page designs that I haven’t used in my previous albums.

There are six page assemblies, three above, three below, which together offer twelve interactive page layouts plus some large photo mats. The large front and back covers make up their own interactive pages, twice as large as the regular ones. The album has a magnetized closure and is crisp and clean on the outside, so it will easily fit into your book case.

I found that this design is perfect to create a large album with 6×6 inch papers and only a handful of 12×12 inch sheets. This makes it a lot more cost effective than an album with lots of large pages. The relatively wide spine offers ample room for you to embellish on the inside.

On its last two pages I used some special-folded paper ornaments. Both are covered in the downloadable written tutorial in my shop. For one of them I also made a free video tutorial, which will be available next week in a new blog post.

For this particular album I used the Optimist collection by Prima Marketing, including their sticky tabs, ATC cards, flowers, leaflets and brads.

I hope you’ll all enjoy this design just as much as I do!
If you wish to create this double-stacked album yourself, check out the written tutorial in my Etsy shop, which has 148 pages and 429 (!) pictures.

Please like, share & subcribe to this blog, my Youtube channel and my Pinterest! You can also follow me on Twitter.

 

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

 

Ageless Beauty, a Chipboard Mini Album

Hi guys, hope you’re enjoying your summer holidays, or at least some great weather if you’re still working!

Today I’m sharing with you a so-called chipboard mini album. This kind of album comes pre-made as far as its pages are concerned. It’s up to you to bind them and to decorate them however you please. I had never created such an album before so I was delighted to try my hand at it. It turned out to be great fun – the biggest challenge was actually to find the right sized album rings, which for some mysterious reason was more difficult than I could have imagined.

Anyway, enjoy the video and pictures below, hope you’ll find some inspiration to do your own chipboard minis! I dubbed mine Ageless Beauty, for it is about my ever glorious mom. 🙂

 

 

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Springtime Dreams Keepsake Album Deluxe

When I first created my Butterflies & Stars Keepsake Album Deluxe back in the fall of 2013, I had no idea it would become quite the scrapbooking hit on Youtube – as per today, it has gotten nearly 460,000 views and the number is still growing! Wow!

Unfortunately I have no explanation for this, since I have not been able to repeat these results… Its sister albums Flora & Fauna, Fairytale Treasures and Country Garden all had their shares of views, and so did my other projects, but none of them ever came anywhere near that unique number. I guess Youtube moves in mysterious ways… Oh well…

Anyway, I received (and am still receiving) a lot of requests for a tutorial on this type of album, this ‘double-spined’ gatefold-like type of album that I’ve dubbed Keepsake Album Deluxe.

And I have some great news for all of those lovely people: I’ve now been able to create this tutorial, and it is huge! It sports 132 pages with 418 pictures!
And it’s available to you now as a digital download in my Etsy shop.

To write a tutorial I of course had to create the project, for I had to take pictures of every step of the process. So here’s the latest edition of my Keepsake Album Deluxe, created using Webster’s Pages’ Nest collection, and I’m calling it Springtime Dreams. 🙂

Enjoy 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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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.