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A "Speedy" Mini Book in Five Ingredients or Less
Hello Ella readers! Abbie here, I’m writing from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the great Brew City. Oh, but that’s an entirely different post. Today, in honor of Mini Book Month at Ella, I’m here to tell you about a mini book of my own creation.
Honestly, I’m not usually one to make many minis - but sometimes they just need to be made. Maybe you want to chronicle a vacation, a week, a routine, an event or - in my case - a repetitive activity. It’s nice to have these little books to tell the story from beginning to end and not be interrupted by “Baby’s First Bath!” or “What I Bought at Costco!” pages. (Please, like you haven’t done the Costco page. Ha.)
This particular mini book contains all my 5K race numbers and times. I wanted a place to keep them all together that looked cuter than a post-it note. I think I succeeded with this quick and easy, ready-to-fill book.
Before I go on, I need to make a small, yet rather important disclaimer: I am not a great (aka fast) runner and the truth is, I like the t-shirts more than the actual race. But. Crossing the finish line - there is nothing better than that.
Once I completed the cover, I was smitten. American Craft foam Thickers, a few banners from the Echo Park kit, and some twine. I adhered the twine with Tombow liquid adhesive and unless I tug at it, it’s, echem, stuck like glue.
Ingredients:
SEI 8x8 book and refills
Echo Park Metropolitan Dots and Stripes Collection
Bella Blvd. Mr. Boy “Heroes” patterned paper*
Red and white twine**
Red and teal coordinating cardstock
*I don’t think this paper is available anymore but Bella Blvd. has some of THE CUTEST scrapbooking products around. Go check her out. And in a total coincidence, she happens to be based out of the town where I live. So Stephanie, if you’re reading this and you need a new friend, my phone number is…. (The rest of you can go ahead and hum “It’s a Small World” in the background.)
**I made the happy mistake of buying one of those giant, industrial-sized spools of red and white baker’s twine. It will last so long that I plan on passing it down to my grandchildren someday. (My kids are currently 6 and 8, FYI.)
An 8x8 album is the PERFECT size for all those race numbers I have collected. This green version is in my future for a book of quilts that I’ve made. These particular albums are great because while they can be expanded, they feel nice and compact.
I love this kit. I used all the paper except for some scraps that I use on cards or as layout embellishments. The labels, borders and letters I still use all the time.
I wanted to keep the design simple, simple, simple. It needed to be something I could continue to add to, but not be overwhelmed by the effort and time of adding a page. I set up this book so that I could potentially add a page while blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back (please let it be my right arm, I’m a lefty).
Recipe:
- Cut the Echo Park kit patterned paper into 8” x 8” pieces.
- Cut the Bella Blvd. patterned paper into 2” x 8” strips.
- Cut the cardstock into 1.5” x 8” strips.
- Type the journaling and print it out on the strips. If you haven’t tried this trick, it’s really easy. Here’s how I do it: Pick a sheet of paper from y bin of scratch paper and print out the journaling. Then I gently tape the cardstock strip on top of the printing. I re-run it through the printer. Ta-dah! (I do this ALL the time with labels, diecuts, and anything else I want to print on.)
- Wrap the twine around the strips and then adhere all parts together.
- On some pages I added flag stickers from the Echo Park kit.
-
Done. Eat a cookie. Oh, wait. This is a book about running... um... go stretch!
The race numbers are not adhered, adding to the casual, laid-back feel of the book. Plus, it seemed more fun to me: I can take them out and wear them for my early morning runs around the neighborhood whenever I want. (LOL. Seriously.)
The fonts I use on scrapbook pages are very important to me. I may not have a drug problem, but I do have a font problem. These beauties are My Own Topher and Seeing Stars.
If I didn’t have a picture for a particular race, I took one later...or didn’t use one at all.
I felt like a total dork taking this picture by myself but I KNEW I’d want it for the scrapbook.
For this page, I adhered the (lovely!) pre-race picture of my friend and I right onto my race number. It was rebellious moment for me.
The last page contains a stack of strips and the remaining stickers. Pret-a-porter a la scrapbooking!
I also filled all the remaining pages with all the 8x8 papers.
So now that I’ve got this awesome little book of running, all I need to do is, uh, fill the pages. Anyone wanna join me? Anyone? Bueller?
Stop by my blog sometime and say hi!
Celebrate the Best of 2012 with an Easy Mini Book
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I find mini books of all sizes and purposes one of the most inspiring activities in scrapbooking. These compact projects are the perfect vehicle for telling a single story with limited time, budget and supplies. I love how easy it us to combine what you already have into a completed album, so much that I recorded a video about my love for mini books.
This tag book offers a location to document highlights for each month in a single year. The cover is the most time-consuming part of the project and simply requires some embellishment.
On the inside of the cover I noted this is an "abridged" version of the best of the year.
Tags for each month of the year are adhered to manila shipping tags, forming the album foundation. Adhere just three sides to create a pocket.
Use the pocket to hold one or two of your favorite 2x2 photos from each month.
Journal a list of highlights on the back of each month's tag. While this mini book is enjoyable on its own, it can also serve as a useful tool to note the stories you most want to scrapbook in more detail.
I recently created a different kind of mini book to document my summer vacation, though it does also embrace petite-sized photos!
Supply Credits: Manila Shipping Tags - Staples; Month Tags - Sassafras; Letter Stickers - American Crafts, Lily Bee Design; Sticker: Crate Paper; Stamp: My Mind's Eye; Ink: ColorBox; Rub-Ons - Studio Calico
Make Your Own Mini Lolly Embellishments
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I love the adorable little lolly embellisments that I see everywhere, so I decided to create my OWN using scraps, toothpicks, a paper punch, and some "Liquid Glass" from Close To My Heart (Glossy Accents would also work).
First, punch out a couple of shapes using any shape you'd like! If you have a digital cutting machine, you could use that as well! Just imagine the different shape possibilities!
Next, cover the shape completely in a thick layer of the liquid glass. The thicker, then better!
Let the shapes dry for a few hours or overnight. You want them to be hard and set.
Snip the point end off of the toothpicks. This was just a personal preference and totally optional. Oh, by the way - wooden toothpicks work just as well! I just like the look of these white plastic toothpicks that I picked up at the local dollar store.
Adhere the toothpicks to the back of your lolly shapes and use them on your next scrapbook layout, card, or home decor piece! These are so fun to make, and you can make them in almost any shape or size.
Enjoy!
From Bookmark to Mini-Album
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I love to read, and I love to share my thoughts about the books I read. Often, I find myself scrabbling for a slip of paper so that I can jot down my ideas as I'm reading, or make note of a great line in a book. Sometimes, I'm searching around for paper pieces for another reason, though -- to use as a bookmark.
This quick and easy project addresses both of those problems and leaves you with a simple mini-album as a record of what you've been reading.
Supplies you'll need:
- Patterned paper -- one-sided paper is best, although you can use double-sided paper if the pattern can be written over
- Paper trimmer and scissors
- Hole punch
- Binder ring
- Bookmark tags -- (Just click the link to grab the free download. This file contains one 8.5x11 page with 8 tags, ready for printing. It also contains a .png file of just the solo tag if you'd like to modify this for your own use.)
STEP 1.Print the tags onto your patterned paper.
STEP 2. Trim your tags to size, using scissors or your paper trimmer.
STEP 3. Read! Take notes! Enjoy your book! (Right now, I'm working my way through my Summer Reading List.)
STEP 4. Punch a hole in the top of the bookmarks and use the binder ring to clip them together. As you read new books, just add them to your album.
August Take Twelve Roundup
Happy August 19, everyone! It's time to take a look at some Take Twelve Team pages and choose the winner of this month's sponsor prize from Big Picture Classes. We hope you're still clicking away each month, but don't be discouraged if you miss a day. Simply take twelve photos from a different day, or choose twelve highlight photos from an entire month you may have missed, and then jump right back on board. We'll never tell.
After an unusually busy summer, my August 12 was a welcome breath of downtime. Sort-of. I was in the midst of preparing for houseguests, but I happily prepared in my pajamas most of the day. Call me lazy if you must, but my house looked pretty awesome by around 4:00 pm when I finally did take a shower. I am drawn to grids for the Take Twelve Project; not all of my photos were taken in landscape orientation, but I set a media placeholder so that each photo would fit into a neat rectangle. I lost a tiny bit of image area on a few of the photos, but I preferred my photos to match on this page.
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You can read more about my photos here.
Valerie Bishop didn't let a lazy, feeling bad day deter her from putting together a treasure of a page! She took Photobooth photos—twelve of them—with her iPhone, printed them out with her Selphy printer, and stacked the two 4x6 photos on top of each other to create a super-fun collage filled with character. Check out all those vertical lines on her page: that unifying element balances the color and whimsy perfectly. It just feels fun, doesn't it?
You can read more about Valerie's page here.
It's always fun when the 12th falls on a special day like Jennie's did, when she was visiting family in Iowa. Jennie's grid design is eye-catching, too—she employs a fun visual trick of overlapping the grid here and there with embellishments and rectangles. It isn't a drastic design choice, but it is a strong one that keeps her grid fresh.
You can read more about Jennie's page here.
Janette focused on food for her August page—check out the amazing amount of color, yum. Grids are anything but boring, too... here's yet another take on how to make a grid shine! Janette chose colors to feature her photos that didn't compete, which really helps them to pop off the page.
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You can read more about Janette's page here.
Be sure to check out other Take Twelve pages from the Take Twelve Team and Ella Friends:
And finally...
Random.org chose lucky number 8, which happens to be Danielle Hunter in our monthly InLinkz collection. You'll have to visit Danielle's post to check out her photos, but she has a fun theme this month—especially for anyone who reads to small children! Danielle will receive a seat in Elisha Snow's upcoming September photography workshop at Big Picture Classes. Congratulations, and I'll see you again here in less than a month for the September edition of Take Twelve!
Insta-Travel Mini Album
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Hello Readers! So glad to be back blogging and creating for Ella since our big move around the world from the Washington, DC area to Japan. Along the way I've been taking lots and lots of photos with my DSLR camera, but sometimes that hasn't been the most convenient option for me at all times. Enter the amazing iPhone app - Instagram. If not for the iPhone camera, many photo ops would have been missed and I'm so thankful to have had it with me.
I decided to make a mini album from several of those photos of our travels to Japan and our first days in our new home country.
I decided to keep the mini rather simple to focus on the photos and the brief journaling I did for each page. I plan to punch two holes on the top of the pages to secure them. That is, when I can find and unpack my hole punch tool!
So there you have it! Mini albums don't have to be scary, complicated or take days to complete. They can be simple and still meaningful!
Mini Treasures
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My kids are always searching for treasures. In the summer these searches intensify. Today I want to share the two mini treasure boxes I created for them to store their prize possessions.
Here is a quick peek at the results.
Supplies: Silhouette Cameo, Cardstock, Patterned Paper, Glue Dots
These were a snap to put together using a silhouette shape from the Silhouette Store. (Note: This could also easily be created using a traced template if you don't have a diecut machine.) I added their initials to each box. To created the confetti I decided to experiment. I cut very thin strips of patterned paper and then lightly crumpled. I love the results and will use this again for gift wrapping!
Inside the boxes I added a little special treasure for each of them to get when they first open the box.
I hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial. These boxes can easily be adapted for small gifts and for party favors. Just think of the possibilities!
mini me!
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August, as I am sure you have discovered, is mini month at Ella. I, for one, am stymied by the mini. Even my December Daily albums which, in theory, are supposed to be minis are really better decribed as large, somewhat unruly, wanna-be, full-sized scrapbooks. Soooo, what is an Ella girl to do? Get over herself, that is what! Okay, then. I really cannot tell a lie and I really must say that this little assignment stumped me but, in fact, the answer was right in front of my face. My desk was littered with packaging from Ormolu because of the last wee assignment I completed so while sifting through all of that goodness I found a little package of Negative Number Package Tags and an idea was born.
There are twelve tags in the package so I am using my tags for my new year's resolutions. Please tell me that there is someone else out there who still feels that the beginning of the school year feels more like the new year than January 1 does?! Anyone? I always use the beginning of the school year to take stock and set goals and learn something new so, using some of my favourite quotes from the Bible I have made a little book of goals (if you will)...it is a work in progress.
Right now, these little tags have a place on my inspiration board but once all twelve are completed they will be gathered on a loose-leaf ring and I will carry them with me in my book bag as a continual reminder of where my energies should be focused! Happy mini month and, dare I say, happy new year, too!
August Take Twelve
Good Sunday morning, everyone—we meet again! When I realized a few days ago that August 12 was right around the corner I literally said out loud: "too fast! too fast!" How a month has passed since I last selected twelve photographs for the Take Twelve Project is beyond me. Here are my two thoughts about this:
1.) Even with a camera in hand, you can't really freeze time so it's best to work as hard as you can to be present.
2.) TGIS—Thank goodness it's Sunday, a day of rest when I don't have a full slate of activities planned. Well, actually, it'll be a day of house cleaning for company arriving Monday... I'm pretty sure some photos of cleaning products will be making an appearance in my twelve photos this month. Won't be the first time I've resorted to this in a photo project!
Where will you be pointing your camera this August 12?
As always, here are a few pages that have popped up in the Take Twelve Project Flickr Group over the last month:
Flickr Group member Lilypadsis used an idea from the Take Twelve Guided Inspiration Kit to inspire her photos—photographing the heat of summer. Living in Kansas this summer is no-joke hot, as the state has experienced one of the worst heat waves in recorded history...what might twelve photos of Kansas in July 1936 (during the actual worst heat wave in Kansas history) looked like? Capturing little details like these contributes valuable primary source historical material to a family's (and state's) record in addition to being a creative way to play along in scrapbooking and photography challenges!
Ella Friend Bobbi Jo Grunewald's twelve photos revolve around summer adventures of the traveling variety. Check out how perfectly she balances photos of people with little details of the day. Summer scrapbooking is best kept simple, and Bobbi Jo's simple grid design allows her photos to shine.
This month's Take Twelve sponsor is Big Picture Classes, and the lucky recipient will receive a spot in Elisha Snow's upcoming workshop that opens September 12, Get Great Photos with Any Camera:
In this four-week class, you'll learn the basics of photography and composition, and discover some fun and amazing photo tips that Elisha has amassed throughout her own learning adventures. You'll have the opportunity to see Elisha in action during her photo shoots, and learn some tricks for getting stellar photos.
Want to play along?
[InLinkz collection closed on August 19, 2012]
Make it Mini: Photo Mosaic
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Recently I've been working on my Week in the Life projects from 2011 and 2012. One stumbling block for me had been what to do with all the photos. Some days I have more than others so a set formula for each day wasn't working. So I used the free photo organiser from Google, Picasa to create a photo mosaic with all the photos on it. I love that there's varied size and positions for each set of photos.
The basic steps are:
- Select your photos
- Click Create - Picture Collage
- Adjust the options as needed
Here's a video to show you how I created this collage.
I'll print these and add it to my home made 10x10 album, which I'm going to embellish with a bit of Cameo cutting and bind with my Bind it all.
Do you use Photoshop Elements? Head over to Digital Scrapbooking HQ for my tutorial on creating a photo collage in Photoshop Elements.
If you are looking for a more customised page, you could always use a digital template from the Take Twelve template set (Guess what? You can still used them even if you aren't doing Take 12!). Angie has a tutorial on using them at the bottom of this Take 12 post.
So what are you waiting for?
Grab some favourite photos and make yourself a quick a stylish photo mosaic today!
Something Big This Way Comes
Sure, it may be "Mini Month" around here, but that doesn't mean we are discriminating against things that are BIG.
Speaking of big, we think you should sign up for the third annual Big Idea Festival from our friends at Big Picture Classes. It's featuring lots of BIG names and it looks like it will be BIG fun.
Plus, it's free. And you can't beat that!
A bunch of bitty fun!!
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Hello there! Ashley here to share with you a super cute mini treat bag trio! Here they are:
Cute huh!? These are super easy to make. Especially when you are pressed for time. You can get these cute little bitty bags at the Whisker Graphics website. They are also the makers of the fabulous Divine Twine that I used on the bags as well. So basically you make the pom pom from twine and adhere it to the bag. Tie the twine around the bag and the pom pom. Adhere your stamped tag (Avocado Arts Bold Celebrations) to the pom pom with a glue spot. Then tie a bow from twine, adhere it to the bag and add a rhinestone for that extra touch. Super easy! Hope you enjoy this!!
~Ashley Harris
Create Tiny Temporary Toys with your scrap stuff!
As Mini Month marches on, we'd like to direct your attention to a recent episode of Books & Crafts, where Wendy Smedley and I share cute little handmade toys inspired by Joel Henriquez of madebyjoel.com fame and his book, Made to Play! Handmade Toys and Crafts for Growing Imaginations
See, here we are just bursting with good ideas.
And here's the Portable Zoo featured in the episode.
Watch and enjoy on MyCraftChannel.com!
Here's a link to Joel's book, plus our hilarious and irreverent book picks from this week:
Introducing Mini Month
Yes, you don't often think "mini" when you think of elephants, but this month Ella is going miniature! Just wait until you see what we have in store for you this month!
Apart from one of my FAVORITE eBooks I've ever edited (seriously), which is called Meaningful Mini Albums and will be released the week of August 21, we've got a whole month of "mini" posts scheduled for the Daily Trumpet Blog.
Watch for:
Mini albums
Mini embellishments
Mini projects
Mini sales
Mini prizes
and more!
And each week, something new will be on sale for 50% off. And, as you know, we don't do that often around here! Just make sure you're signed up for our email newsletter so you'll be the first to know about each sale.
After all, everything's cuter when it's mini, right?
To start the month off, you can enjoy a FREE tiny thing when you purchase another tiny thing at ellapublishing.com.
If you purchase "Make a Smiles Mini Book" by Stacy Julian (some proceeds of which go to Operation Smile), you'll get the itty bitty "On-the-Go Photo Tips" by Rebecca Cooper for FREE. Just put both items in your card and apply coupon code MINIMONTH before August 31.
What are your favorite mini scrapbook products, mini albums, and more? We'd love to hear it!