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Sunday 18 October 2015

A Mini Album

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! I hope you are all enjoying your weekend. I'm having a good one so far, my replacement stamp set arrived yesterday (Saturday) from Clearly Besotted Stamps beautifully packaged as always in their signature hot pink tissue paper. My energy levels are quite low at the moment as I'm fighting the dreaded lurgy but I have managed to upload my very first video to YouTube! It was less than 2 minutes long but took about 20 minutes to load so I'm probably not going to put many more up. It wasn't a craft video (shock!) but a short clip of my cat Jinx watching a video for cats featuring birds and other wildlife - his reaction when a squirrel appears made me giggle. I would love to start doing tutorials but don't have the proper equipment, you really need a camera fixed to a tripod above your work surface and my camera doesn't even have a slot/hole for a tripod so isn't any good for tutorials. To be honest I was a bit shocked I was able to record for nearly 2 minutes because every time I've tried it before it's shut down after 20 seconds or so claiming its memory is full. It's nice to finally have a video uploaded onto my channel even if no-one apart from me ever sees it. It's one post down on this blog if you'd like to see it. :)

The other thing I've been up to this weekend is craft related - my first proper mini album! I've made tiny albums out of one sheet of 12" scrapbook paper quite a few times but really just to try the techniques out and I've also made a few envelope minis with tags inside but this is the first time I've made a mini using chipboard panels for the front, back and sides. I followed a tutorial on YouTube by Anna Komenda https://youtu.be/M5Ii1ZL382g please click on the link to view - it's a really good tutorial. Anna made her folding mini in pastel pinks but I used Santoro Mirebelle A4 scrapbook papers which have a more Gothic feel to them without being too gloomy.

Front of my Folding Mini Album tied with cream cord
I've ordered some magnetic fasteners similar to those used in handbags and purses for future projects but they haven't arrived yet, the magnetic tape isn't strong enough to keep the mini album closed on it's own which is why I've wrapped the mini with this cream cord.

Inside of the mini
Out of view on this photo is a strip of magnetic tape covered with washi tape which matches the papers on the right hand panel, my plan was it would attach to the metal butterflies on the inside of the left panel and keep the mini closed but the magnetic strip isn't magnetic enough to hold it closed. I added some glittered enamel dots to the metal butterflies to make more of a feature of them. The ribbon holding the folded pages closed is printed with 'remember'.  The metal heart is a coiled paper clip bought at Boyes a few years ago.

Close up of metallic butterflies


Right hand pages of mini album

Left hand pages of mini album

I haven't decorated the pages of the mini yet but even plain I think they are rather pretty. I chose papers that have either a canvas texture, are glazed in parts or glittered so the album has a lot of texture to it without needing to add a lot of embellishments. I'm not going to add the instructions on how to make this album because Anna Komenda has done a brilliant tutorial and apart from the ribbon holding the pages together and the different way of fastening the album, I haven't done anything different to what she shows. The only real difference is that Anna gives the measurement for the front paper as 30cm in length but as you are probably aware A4 is about 29 cm in length, I don't think the extra cm makes that much of a difference as long as you are careful folding it over the mountboard/chipboard panels. For full details on how to make this mini please click on the link further up.
Pages neatly tied back up with ribbon


Washi tape covered magnetic strip and metal butterflies


I hope you've enjoyed looking at my latest project, I really enjoyed it and I hope to be making one a bit bigger as I'd love a handbag sized mini to display some of my wedding photos. Unfortunately the pages of this mini are too small as I don't want to crop my original photos and we don't have a scanner to put them on the computer and re-print. I know all the scrapbook mags/books say don't use original photos but a lot of ours are pretty much identical - the photographer took and had printed nearly 400 photos! But what is the point of having wedding photos if you don't use them and love them? We don't have children so I doubt they'll be treasured once we're gone so I may as well display them in a creative way while there's someone who cares about them (that would be me btw lol).

This is a very long post I hope you've not got too bored. Please check out the post beneath with my lovely Jinx and my goofy giggle. If you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx








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Sarah xxx