Julie's Acrylic Album Class #9

For my final embellishments, I replaced the silver hinged rings that came with the album with bronze rings. The bronze rings melded with my theme much more than the shiny silver ones. I’ll save those for a future project. After assembling the album pages on the rings, I cut a piece of thick twine. This thick twine is from my gardening supplies and works well to simulate rope in craft projects. I used the piece of thick twine to tie knots around each ring, so that a piece of twine ran between each ring. To this twine I tied a piece of coordinating ribbon and a piece of both red and blue thin twine. I did the same thing with the ribbon & twine between each ring.

I still had the brown painted T and thought it would be fun to use it in an unexpected way. I used a large needle (from my Making Memories tool kit) to poke a hole in the T and loop blue twine through the hole. I used the ends of the blue twine to tie a red button onto the front of the T. I then used the loop to hang the T from my top bronze ring.

When I set up the album and stepped back to admire it. I was very happy that after using so many different techniques learned from so many sources had come together to create what I felt was a cohesive decorative project.

My friend loved her gift and I still can’t wait to help her place her 40th birthday party photos in the album. I plan to help her decided which photos to include and which sizes to print them in. We’ll get together soon to do the last part of this project. I want to print the photos in sepia tone and in various sizes to complement the Western themes and colors I have so carefully created. I’ll take photos of the finished project and share them with you soon!

Acrylic Album Class Coming Soon...

I'm excited to share my latest project with you! I've got photos of everything I worked on for the creation of my first acrylic album. I made this album as a 40th birthday present for my friend Teresa, who had a big barndance for her birthday party. In preparation, I looked all over the store for papers & embellishments that had a Western look. Some were from our farm section, but others were pulled from other places, including our clearance papers. At first it took me a while to get my head around this project. I was worried about how to put together the pages when you can see down into the album and through the back of each page. But once I started, the project got easier as I went along. I'm taking all my photos on my Thanksgiving trip to Medford and promise to return with a DIY acrylic album class so you won't be afraid to give this beautiful medium a try. Happy Thanksgiving!

Julie's 10 Minute Mini Album Class #4

For a few final touches, use some embellishments from your stash at home. Or find some in the bulk embellishment section at our store. I used a little orange chipboard flower from the Creative Cafe collection, and put a copper brad through the hole. I adhered this to my page with glue dots. And finally for a special touch on the inside pages, I picked some paper maple leaves from my collection and used a glue dot to add one to the corner of each page.

My album was finished in 10 minutes, I couldn't believe it! Such a cute gift in so little time for so little money! Adding these last embellishments did take me an extra 5 minutes after I got home from cropping at the store, but I think they're totally worth it!

I encourage everyone to give this project a try! It's so nice to have that great feeling of accomplishment in such a short time! So many projects in scrapbooking take so long to complete, that it's nice to have a little ego boost to inspire your creativity! And my mom really loved her own album of her Little Pumpkins!

Julie's 10 Minute Mini Album Class #3

Next, use your scissors to cut the ribbon into 12 4" lengths. Take each piece of ribbon and tie it around the hinged ring. There is no particular order for tying the ribbon, but I like to mix my textures and prints so that each ribbon is next to one totally different from itself.

Julie's 10 Minute Mini Album Class #2

After punching each page, use your corner rounder
to round the corners on each page.

Open your hinged ring and place each page onto the ring, with the cover on top.

Julie's 10 Minute Mini Album Class #1

(Please do not copy our photos or text and paste into another site or print them out. Instead, please pass on a link to our site to anyone who may find this online class useful. Thank you!)

This mini-album is a great gift idea and only took me 10 minutes to complete...after I chose my papers and photos. I used 8 wallet size photos for this project. I choose wallets as the size for my photos when I ordered them from the Costco Photo Center. Costco's wallets come 4 to a sheet and are 39 cents per sheet. So each photo is about 10 cents each and for the total cost of $3.12 (8 sheets of 4 photos each), you could make 4 of these mini albums to use for gifts. Next, I chose my papers. I looked at my photos for and thought about the theme I was trying to create and the common colors in each photo. Since these were all pumpkin patch photos, I looked for papers with a Fall theme. I chose double sided patterned papers, so that I could have a little more variety in my patterns and so that the back of each page would look as nice as the front. Another plus about double sided papers for this project, is that they are thicker than most one sided papers. My Fancy Pants papers were 89 cents each, and I chose 3 papers for a total of $2.67. You could choose just one paper for the whole album if you like and then the cost would be less. With my 3 sheets of paper, I would be able to make 3 more albums, using my extra photos. Next I chose a hinged ring to match my papers and hold the album together (75 cents). After completing the project, I did end up adding a few embellishments from my collection for a little extra flair. Feel free to add as many embellishments as you like to your album. To save money, look through your stash at home first and see if you have anything that might match your theme and then bring them to the store when you're ready to choose your papers. You might have everything you need or just need to add a few things from the bulk embellishments section. I also chose to add ribbon to the ring on my finished project. The ribbons I chose averaged about $1.00 per yard and for one album, I needed about 4 feet of ribbon, so the cost was approximately $1.33 per album. As far as adhesives, anything you use to adhere your photos in your albums will work fine on this project. I used a brown Zig marker to write my title on the cover and glue dots to adhere my embellishments. As far as tools, I used my scissors to trim my photos and my large Fiskars trimmer to cut the paper. I used a regular sized hole punch for the holes and a corner rounder to round each page.

My total for 4 mini albums to use as gifts is $14.11 for supplies (not including extra embellishments & adhesives). So the cost for each mini album works out to be about $3.53. I think these are wonderful gifts for moms, dads, grandmas & grandpas, aunt & uncles. Use this mini album format to showcase your kids, their hobbies, your pets, your travels and so many more wonderful events!

Let's get started!

First use your scissors to trim your 8 wallet size photos (2 1/2" x 3 1/2"). You can either trim them with a white border or trim off all the white. Next take your double sided patterned paper and cut 9 4" x 3" rectangles. The extra piece will be your album cover.

Experiment a little with your photos and each paper, lay each photo on the front & back of each paper, checking to see which mix you like. I laid mine all out on the table to see which order I wanted both the photos and the patterns to be in. But don't worry too much about this part! When you choose the papers to coordinate with your photos, you took care of the hard part! What takes the most time in scrapbooking is deciding what to do. So if you're looking for a quick project, try to not spend so much time worrying and spend more time getting the project done! You'll love it in the end and it will look great!

Use your choice of adhesive and mount the photos on the papers. Think of a cute title for your album and use a marker to write it on the cover. Next, take each rectangle and punch a hole in the corner. I punched one of the photo pages first and then held each of the next papers behind it, one at a time, using the first hole as my guide, to be sure my holes were all in the same place.

10 Minute Mini Album Class

This project was a last-minute idea of mine when I was working the crop last Friday night. I was making a pumpkin patch page with the kids' pictures. Since I was using wallet size photos printed from Costco, I had 3 extra of each picture. I was wondering what to do with the extras while I made my layout and an idea came to me. I could make a mini album for my mom that she could carry in her purse and share pictures of her grandkids with friends. I cut each wallet size photo with a white border and measured them. They were 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches and I had 8 of them. I looked around the store and found 3 sheets of double-sided, printed paper from Fancy Pants True Papers collection. I grabbed one copper hinged ring and a hole punch.

I'll finish the rest of this project post soon! :) -Julie