Mini Albums with Design Team Expert Lowri McNabb

Please welcome Lowri for her first ever and completely AMAZING Design Team Expert blog post. You may recognize her as one of our fabulous Fresh Face Designers from last year. Lowri is sharing her method for creating a mini album. Lowri really knows her stuff when it comes to papercrafting so be sure to read through her instructions for creating this project!

Lowri here to share an idea for a mini album created from a single sheet of 12x12 paper. This is one of my favourite techniques for creating mini albums!

I have used the latest This and That Charming Collection to create a simple mini with some recent photos of my family. I have a tutorial below showing how I created it and as you can see from the following picture that the weight of the Echo Park paper is perfect for this kind of technique as you can get a crisp fold without absolutely no paper cracking.

After I created the base, I then used strips from the Elements and Alpha sticker sheets to decorate the tops and bottoms of my pages – don’t forget to use the negative pieces left over too, or you can cut the wider strips in half to stretch them further. The camera sticker looks great on the cover against the Chevron print of the Border Strips (reverse) paper and this fabulous Snapshots flag from the Elements sticker sheet.

For each page I cut a simple mat from the Tickets Please paper, glued it at an angle and added my photos on top. I cut the pictures into a Polaroid shape to keep the old style camera feel. Using additional elements and a couple of chipboard pieces, I kept the decoration simple to allow the photos to stand out. There were so many great elements in the collection I was spoilt for choice!

TUTORIAL:

1.       Take a piece of 12” X 12” paper and trim off four inches from one side.

2.       Take the 12” X 8” piece and fold into 8 equal pieces as shown.

3.       Using a sharp knife – make a cut through the paper from point a to b.

4.       Fold the paper wrong sides together at the remaining intact fold .

5.       Using the folds as a guide create a booklet.

6.       Glue pages together as shown at c, d and e (I used a strong adhesive tape runner).

7.       You should have three pages of double thickness paper and two covers of single thickness.

8.       Cut a 12" X 4” piece of paper and glue to one side of the book.

9.       Turn the book over and crease at the spine of the book firmly before gluing the other side of the cover. This will ensure a neat finish and mean there is enough paper over the spine to allow the book to open freely. To finish, trim off the excess paper from the cover with a sharp knife

Above you can see a couple of other albums I have created using this technique with the older For The Record, Happy Days and Holly Jolly Christmas Collections.

One little hint - If you are trying any technique like this for the first time – I suggest using a scrap piece of paper that you can measure , mark and make adjustments on if necessary – before you cut into your really precious stuff!

Supplies List:

Echo Park Paper: This and That Charming Collection Kit - THC26016, This and That Charming 6 x 12 Chipboard - THC26022, This and That Charming Layered Chipboard -  THC26021

Extras: Double sided adhesive tape, dimensional mounting foam

I have a feeling that Lowri's technique has got your creative heart racing! Using this technique how will you create your own album? We'd love to see it. Simply leave us a link in the comments section below or upload your page to our Facebook gallery to share with the rest of the community.