Write. Click. Scrapbook.

A Week of Tutorials | DIY Smash Book

I came up with a DIY Version of the popular Smash books, which I am calling my "Whatnot Book". Bear in mind that I've never actually seen a Smash book except online, so there's a good chance mine bears little resemblance to the real thing!

 

 

 

Here's how I made it.

I used chipboard, which I upcycled from an old calendar, patterned papers, duct tape and my Bind-it-All.

I started with the cover first, cutting three pieces from chipboard: one each for the front and back, and a third for the spine

I'll be covering up the printed bit later.

Notice how there is a bit of space between the covers and the spine? This is how it will be taped up. I used this black duct tape that I had on hand, but I think bookbinding or gaffer tape would be perfect.

So, tape all three pieces together like so

Then flip over

and tape the other side. And ta da!

The tape over the spaces acts like a "hinge" for the spine and covers.

Now for the body of the book:

Cut a nice stack of patterned paper pages roughly the same size as the covers.I used double sided papers.

The front of the first page and the back of the last page can be blank since we won't be seeing them once the book is done

Bind the pages together with the Bind-it-All. You can find some tips for binding in this post. Here's a look at some of my pages

Now to put it all together!

Cover up the inside of the covers with patterned paper (if there's a design you don't want to see)

Now insert the bound pages, and stick the blank sides of the first and last pages to the covers

And there she is!

I used a couple stamps to add a title to the cover

Then I remembered that the original books have the glue pen combo thingy. Well, I'm not that good so I came up with this instead on the inside front cover.

I'm really glad I held on to that orange elastic which came with a set of towels!

On the inside back cover I stuck a pocket and filled it with journaling bits and pieces.

 

Do you think you would make or use a book like this? If so what for? Let me know what you think in the comments!

In Review

Happy Saturday! We hope that you are loving MiniMadness month and that you have been inspired to create your own!

This month we celebrated with 37 mini albums. Its a dream come true! We hope you have had fun!

 

There is so much to love about our gallery this month. And with so much to see and process, we know it is a bit easy to overwhelm. So we put together some recipes for you: here are 4x6 reference cards to remind you of the details of each of the albums in our gallery. Feel free to print them and keep them for your records. We hope that it helps!

Once you have these printed, you could bind them together to make a mini album to celebrate our month of minis!

Thank you for stopping by and please enjoy your weekend!

Day 4 of mini madness with COCOA DAISY!

Hey there, everyone!  Jennie here and I'm so excited to share my mini album created from the Cocoa Daisy kit, Sketchbook! Based on the photos of the kit I was excited to get to work -- but after receiving the kit I was blown away.  The colors and content were just exciting!

I didn't add anything to this kit except gesso, modeling paste and a stencil.  Everything else was found in this kit!

Anyway.  My husband and youngest son had just taken a weekend trip to our home state of Iowa and I decided to document that special time.  Luckily for me my husband took lots of photos.

I used an album I had received from Basically Bare a while back as it was not a standard album and it really provided some interesting features.  

I kept the cover simple -- I knew inside would be FULL of photos, words and embellishments.  I wanted that to be the focus.

I covered all of the brown interior pages with gesso.  I wanted a white surface to work with. However, I left the spiral edges messy (including getting gesso on the binding) to create less than perfect approach.  

There are two things that I was just in love with in this kit. The first was the YELLOW.  It was so happy and bright -- it really made the album have a cheerful feel.  Second was the Chic Tags Road Trip snip'em Tags.  Perfect for the theme, wouldn't you say? 

Those Maya Road camera transparencies are the perfect embellishment.  They add interest without competing with the photos or any other elements!

This life is pretty amazing.  Enough said!

On this canvas page I knew I wanted something special.  It didn't mean it had to be fancy, I just wanted something to really stand out.  So, I free hand stitched this heart with the letters Iowa inside.  I was very happy with how it turned out.

I absolutely LOVE the little burst journaling card cut from one of the Websters Pages 12x12 sheets.  It's just the perfect little accent for this page.  What I learned?  Journal BEFORE attaching the sheet to a canvas page.  The canvas page did not provide good support for writing.  (You can probably tell by my less than stellar hand writing)

This sheet of yellow triangle Websters Pages paper is my favorite.  I seriously wish I had several more sheets.   

I was really excited to use the Jenni Bowlin feather paper -- the B side of this pattern was very subtle and it was a perfect accent.

These thickers were a perfect choice and really complimented my album -- they are so neutral yet the size and woodgrain really do add a lot of interest!

This page is my favorite in the album.  I don't know if it's because of the paper, sequins, and tag or if it's just the most ordinary subject that happens everyday.  Either way.  It really makes me so happy!

Two words: Modeling Paste.  I don't consider myself to be a multi media scrapper AT ALL.  I don't usually find myself drawn to anything too complex.  BUT, this modeling paste + Julie Balzer template looks like snow and tire tracks.  Perfect for a page about driving in the snow!

I am so excited with how this mini album turned out and I am so excited to have had the chance to work with this Cocoa Daisy kit.  I can see many more mini albums in my future thanks to this!

JENNIE

Day 3 of Cocoa Daisy Week

Hey there. Erin here (along with my niece Shelby. Yep, I still do not have a picture of me by myself. I swear one of these days...), with my mini album made using the March Cocoa Daisy kit. First off, thank you to Cocoa Daisy - I love this kit. The colors were right up my alley. I would buy each piece of paper in the store, and I love the embellishments. The only things I used for this album not included in the kit were my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher and some border punches. That's it. And it came together so quickly. I love it when that happens! 

I first attempted an album about my friends a couple years ago but it never happened. Since then it's been on my mini-albums to-do list. I wanted a way to record and celebrate my friends. This isn't a place for lengthy stories or detailed information on how we met. Rather it's a place to keep my favorite pictures and memories of my friends and the things we do. I plan to keep adding to it, eventually having a record of my friends and our fun times through the years. Obviously, I could go back to my childhood and add to it, but that's overwhelming. So I guess it should really be titled, "Girlfriends: my friendships from when I had my first child and forward." I'll likely go back and add a few of my favorite photos from the last seven years but no farther. 

First up, the cover. I don't usually do much with the cover/title page. (Need proof? See my race mini album from last month's gallery. The cover is just the word "run."  See, simple.) But I couldn't resist the rose ribbon. So I made that the basis of my cover along with the word stickers. Perfect for describing my friendships with the girls in the album. 

I stuck to the same formula for my interior pages - a 2.5x3.5 picture, paper strips, border punch, title, journaling tab, stapes and some sequins. That's it. the paper and picture placement varied slighly on the pages, but other than that, it was the same design on each page. This made is very easy to complete. In fact, I did it assembly line style. I first attached the picture and both the large and small paper strips. then I added the title to each page. Next was the journaling tab and I finished with adding sequins to all the pages. 

Here are five of the interior pages. I will add full names and places on the back of the pages. You know, in preparation for when I'm old and can't remember anyone or anything.  

 

I hope this inspires you to scrapbook some of your friendships, too! 

Cocoa Daisy Week - day 2

Greetings friends! I'm back again with another mini - this time using the Cocoa Daisy March kit - Sketchbook. I was so excited to play with this kit since the colors were so pretty -it's definitely out the my box, but that's often the most fun!

I knew I wanted to create a mini that was more of a book rather than a traditional photo mini-album. This mini doesn't have any photos at all! I just used the supplies to create a book full of affirmations and reminders. It's called "How to be Happy" and many of the ideas are taken from a book I read called "The Happieness Advantage" by Shawn Achor. I really enjoyed the book and wanted to have something that would give me little happy boosts every now and again.

Here's my cover:

I created the album by cutting some of the cardstock sheets down to 4x6, adding some patterned papers and binding with a Bind-it-All. I used thin chipboard for the cover, adhering patterned papers to the front and back before adding my title.

The inside pages are all cardstock, with strips of patterned paper:

The little journal cards were perfect for adding all my text/journaling. I embellished with the wordstrips and various tabs and stickers.

I had a lot of fun making this mini and will enjoy looking at it when I need some happy :) Thanks to Cocoa Daisy for providing the wonderful Sketchbook kit for us to play with!

Mini Madness with Cocoa Daisy

Hi there! I am here to kick of another week of minialbums! This week we will show you different ways that we used the beautiful products that came in the March kit called Sketchbook.  The kit was packed with a nice suble color palette. I knew right away that I wanted to use the newborn photos I had taken of my nephew for a minibook. 

For this mini I used a pocketed page protector with 3 pockets for 6x4" photos and 3 smaller pockets where you could write any data that you´d like to have with your photo had you used the page protector in a regular photo album. 

Trying to take photos of plastics are so hard, but I hope that you can see what I am ttrying to show you ;)

 

Here is a photo of the finished album. As you perhaps can see, I have folded the page protector like an accordion album, so you´d see each page and then you´d turn it to see the backside.

 

Here is a look at one side. It has the title page and two more pages. I loved working with the muted colors in the kit they fitted perfectly with the light photos. I turned all my photos into polaroids using the frame option at Picmonkey.com and I printed them a bit smaller, so that I could have the cardstock matting them. 

 

The woodgrain alpha stickers were so beautiful and I used a V since his name is Viggo. And Elle´s studio always makes the cutes journaling spots. I punched hearts from a few of the patterned papers that came with the kit.

 

I used my scalloped circle punch to use some of the patterned papers easily on each page and the tiny word stickers were one of my favorite in the kit and they were perfect for this project!  

 

Here is the back of the album, so the mini has a total of 6 pages. 

 

I had so much fun doing this mini....so I made another one!

 

As you can see I used the same photo on the cover and actually throughout the mini. But I changed the color palett to blue. 

 

I might like the look of this one even better! The aqua and yellow patterned paper in the kit is yummy! I think that by using pieces of the patterned paper like this is a nice way to add them to a project without having them taking over. And obviously you can cram more pages/projects from a sheet like this ;)

 

This is the back of the mini. 

These minialbums are going to be gifts and I can´t wait to give them away!

Thank you so much to Cocoa Daisy for providing this beautiful kit for me to play with! 

Lisa

This week is brought to you by Cocoa Daisy

Each of our designers this week will be using the
 March main kit, Sketchbook, from Cocoa Daisy.

a bitty bit of extra fun

This month we have an extra Saturday! We wanted this extra special Saturday to be extra special for all of you so I thought perhaps we could make a quick little mini together??

Next weekend is Easter. Our grandmas are very kind to us and I thought they could use a bit of love in return. I was browsing around looking for a fun and quick way to make a brag book. Something that could be made twice over quickly. (Thrice, actually, as I might want one for us, too!)

I put together a set of photo overlays. One for the title and 11 for photos. (I used the fonts of the talented Kimberly Geswein: the frames, the doodles, and the title.) Here is how they look together.

 

And this is how it looks once my photos were added underneath the overlays.

We have a bit of an irreverent sense of humor around here and hope that this will be taken with the goofy love that it is intended. Santa brought Richard some fake mustaches that we used for some silly photos. (Obviously, Rich's isn't actually using a fake one. heehee!) (Nigel's photos are missing as he wasn't in the mood the day we took the photos. I will need to try to get his this weekend, so we have time to print and ship.) 

Once I get Nigel's photos I will print them out on my awesome Epson and then pop them into a plastic brag book. Not only easy to finish but also easy to mail. A twofer!! 

If you would like to make a quick album, too, you may download the overlays here. They are psd documents. Just open them up in your photo processing program and then cut and paste them onto a 6x4 photo. Leave me word if you have questions!

Thank you for stopping! I hope you have been enjoying our mini month. Our final week begins Monday with Cocoa Daisy!! It's going to be another great one!

adoringly,

All Star Wrestling

Hi everyone! Diane here to share another mini album made with the Gossamer Blue kit. I was really excited when I opened the kit and saw all the bright and happy colors. We had just finished a great wrestling season and the color scheme and embellishments were perfect for documenting the season.

I decided to make a folding album using the white and green cardstock as the base along with a piece of charcoal grey from my stash. Once I had the base together I began adding patterned paper, photos and embellishments. I tied the finished album together with the twine that was included in the kit as part of the packaging.

The kit made it easy to put together and included cardstock, patterned paper, two letter stickers, stickers, die cuts and an assortment of embellishments. There were enough supplies in the kit to create this mini album plus enough leftovers to easily make 2-3 layouts and cards. The only things I added to the kit were a couple sheets of cardstock, the green star paper and a couple journaling cards that coordinated with the journaling card patterned paper included in the kit.I also used my Silhouette to cut various shapes and words.

Ready to see the inside? 

This is the view when the front cover is opened.

The inside title page is exposed after the second outside cover is opened.

I scrapbook with kits almost exclusively and love having that monthly package arrive at my door step. It has everything I need to scrap for the next month. The Gossamer Blue kit was full of some amazing new releases and fun to create with too.

Thank you for visiting today! Don't forget to swing by Gossamer Blue and check out their amazing kits.

ETA: Per the requests of serveral readers I have created a tutorial for creating the folding mini album - Folding Mini Album Tutorial! Enjoy!

Gossamer Blue Mini Album Day #2

Hi Everyone! Christine here to show you what I made with the awesome March main kit from Gossamer Blue! I was so excited when I found out that we were making mini albums with a kit. I’ve subscribed to scrapbooking kits in the past, but always felt bad when I couldn’t use up the whole kit every month. I knew that I would use most of the kit up making the mini album, and that gave me a great sense of accomplishment!

 

 

The best thing about using the Gossamer Blue kit to put together my mini album is that I didn’t have to spend a lot of time worrying about which products to use. All the papers and embellishments were coordinated and chosen already. That meant that I could go right into creating, which is such a HUGE time-saver!

I decided to make a bound-book with my Bind-It-All. I’ve had my Bind-It-All for a few months, but was too scared to use it yet. I was intimidated by it!

Thankfully, I found an awesome tutorial by my Write.Click.Scrapbook. teammate Francine Clouden. Francine de-mystified the Bind-It-All for me and I was able to successfully bind my mini album the first time I tried it! Thanks Francine!

I decided to make a mini album of my favorite things this year. “Things” is pretty loose, as it will include things like hanging out with friends. Instead of putting the title of my mini album on the outside cover, I decided to use the first page on the inside instead. That way the embellishments are protected inside the cover and won’t fall off.

 

I had some shipping tags on hand, so I included a few of them, bound into my album. I used it here for my title. I got to go to CHA in January, where I met many scrapbooking friends, including a couple of my WCS teammates Deb Duty and Jenny Larson!

I used my Silhouette digital cutter to cut “FRIENDS” out of my page before binding my book. I sewed a piece of paper on the other side to make a pocket. This way, the patterned paper shows up to fill the “FRIENDS” cut out!

 

This page documents how much I love my Raskog cart from IKEA. I use it to organize all my Project Life supplies.

 

One of my favorite things is my new iPhone, and the case I got for it that looks like a Polaroid Land camera!

 

Spending time with one of my best friends is my favorite. I used my Silhouette to cut out “ENJOY” before binding the book, similar to what I did with “FRIENDS” above.

 

The other side of the “ENJOY” cutout has a sewn pocket.

 

My brave husband and his sister completed the Tough Mudder race.

 

I have a few blank pages left, where I can add in more “favorite things” this year as they happen. I really love my bound mini-album, and I loved putting it together using the Gossamer Blue kit! It really made the project much easier and faster to tackle. And that, my friends, is a good thing! :)