OK, I don’t know if this is “technically” a mini-album, but I am going to call it that. The album pages are made of 8 1/2 x 11” white cardstock (I bought a ream at Sam’s a while back) and for the album cover I cut out of manilla folders, then sewed on a piece of pretty patterned paper. I rounded all the corners and made a template to punch my holes from using just a regular paper punch that you can get at Target or Wally World.
Anyhow, the graphic on the front came from the The Graphics Fairy, and I added the Maranello High font using my Creative Memories Storybook Creator software. I then took out some decade old chalks and proceeded to give the graphic a good chalking too! It was fun to try to get it to match the patterned paper a bit, but I still wanted it to stand out a bit.
Anyhow, I bound it with fabric scraps and then pasted in the Christmas cards using my CM Tape Runner, like so…
I used my CM Fine Tip Pens to add journaling (I did pencil it in first because it had been so long since I had journalled…but I erased the pencil and it looks just fine…IMO). Most of the journalling was who the card came from, if it wasn’t obvious and then a little about what events we attended with them or a special memory. If a card had writing on the back, I just put that card on the page by itself and then printed the sentiment from the back, and then wrote my journaling in script. If a photo card came with a Christmas letter, I tried some creative folding and put the letter and the photo card on the same page…in the future I think I will learn some origami so it will look more creative…it works for now though and was quick, so I am happy.
Because there were so many designs and motifs with all the different cards, it would have been a lot more work to add paper and embellishments to every page. I opted not to do that and just switch out my pen colors for journaling. Plus this keeps the cost down.
I also added a bit of the history behind this album on the front page…
It reads…
“For my family,
When I was a little girl, our family had an album that held all of our cards. Well probably not “all” of our cards we ever received but for a short time anyways. There were congratulatory cards for having babies or getting married. There were get well cards and sympathy and birthday cards. I loved pouring through its pages and seeing the bright colors. Later, when I could read, I enjoyed reading the sentiments and trying to decipher the curvy scrolling of the signatures.
That is why I am making this album…and hopefully more. To share that special memory with you and remind you of the good relationships in our family’s lives.
With all my love,
Dawn a.k.a. Mom”
So this album went SUPER quick and I plan to complete more. I am a keeper and have years of cards for the family. Each kid has a “keepsake” box and all the cards and such they have received are in those boxes. With this being such an easy album to put together, I will probably put one together for each kid.
One thing I did notice is that the ribbons are a bit difficult for the little ones to use for flipping pages without damaging the album. So I will opt to splurge and get some of those keyring type of binding items and then tie the ribbons to that. Anyhow, super easy and super cheap, if you are a save like me, you might want to give it a try.
Lovies,DJ
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