Mini-albums. I
love them. Love. Them. Of course, in the interest of full-disclosure I should
say that while I love them, I'm not always great at finishing them. But that's not always a bad thing. More on
that later.
We've had some great examples of mini-albums here at WCS over the last year, but I wanted to give you even more ideas. Ideas for minis that you maybe hadn't though of yet, some ideas maybe you've thought of, but haven't yet acted on. Maybe today's post will be just the inspiration you need to start one.
Here's my most recent mini-album. Emma just finished her first year of preschool. Every Thursday was show-and-tell, and I kept track of what she took for each one. Well, I did my best. I definitely missed a few weeks, but I've been able to remember most of them. Originally, I'd wanted to take a picture of Emma with that day's item, but I couldn't quite remember to do that except for once, instead I'd think of it two days later then just tell myself I'd do it next week. Instead, in order to do this mini, I went around and photographed each item wherever I found it in the house.
For the title page, I photographed Emma's Show and Tell bag. She made this the first week of school. Those are her hand prints on the bag. I can't believe it made it through the school year without getting either destroyed or lost.
(Please pardon my dirty scanner. I will clean it one of these days.)
I printed each picture 2x2, placing two pictures per page, along with the date she took it to school and any comments she made that I remembered or recorded.
(In addition to cleaning my scanner, I will work on figuring out why my pages look crooked when they aren't.)
I think it will so neat for her to go back and look at this 20 or 30 years from now. To see what belongings were important enough for her to want to share them with her friends and teachers. I know I would love to have a record like this from my childhood. She took some funny stuff, the funniest being a picture of her teachers. Teachers her fellow students see every day, and the picture being one each of those students received in the mail before school started. But she loved having their picture in her room so much she wanted to share it. And that's the whole point of the album. Capturing what she, at three and four, loved and valued, what brought her joy, and what she wanted to share with others.
Now to the to the albums I haven't finished. There are two types of mini-albums, at least for me: those that are close-ended (of your camping trip or family reunion, etc.) and those that you can add to as needed. I have quite of few of the second type going on right now:
the stories that always come up Which is here and here in our November gallery.
Our Christmas Ornaments I take a picture of our new ornaments each year, print them 2x2 and record who received them and who gave them.
In Any Given Week I... An all about me album that was on the American Crafts blog here.
Emma at 3 I've posted some pages from this album on my blog here and here. Of course, now that she's four, I need to change the title page. My purpose with this album is to give Emma something she can hold and look at as much as she wants. The pages are simple: not much journaling if any at all, I use themed papers and embellishments that appeal to her when I can, and I use my own handwriting. Many of these pages are ones I also create for my albums, which is where I include all the journaling. But for her, she just wants to look at the pictures, remember the occasion and enjoy seeing princess paper and Dora stickers. When she sees photos of herself, she usually says something like, "Look Mom! That's me! Remember when I..." That's what I want to hear when she looks at this album. It's made just for her, about her, to make her smile.
Upcoming pages for this album: nature walk, playground, church playgroup, dress-up, riding new bike, t-ball, soccer and more.
Happy Halloween Another simple 6x6 album capturing my children's Halloween costumes each year. While I still do full pages for my holiday album, I like having all their costumes in one place.
So what albums do you have going on right now? Do you have a bunch of ongoing minis like me? Or do you tend to stick with the close-ended type? Have any posted? If you do, share the link, we'd love to see them.
