Mini Album Tips & Tricks by Kris Berc

Hello everyone, we hope you had a wonderful weekend! It's Kris Berc here today. I often wonder if there might be other scrapbookers out there like me who can feel a bit intimated by the thought of creating a mini album. They're such wonderful keepsakes, but without a strategy or plan, they can take quite a bit of time to create.

I have picked up some simple but really helpful to me mini-album-making tips and tricks along the way that I used while creating my mini album this month using our beautiful April Album kit. These tips can be used when recreating this album and can also be applied to mini-albums in general. I hope you will find these helpful!

I have found that creating a mini album in assembly line fashion is the most efficient way for me. By this I mean instead of working on one album page at a time and finishing it completely before moving on to the next page, I work on all of the pages at the same time and finish a process on each page before moving on to the next process.

Covering the scalloped edged raw chipboard pages of the mini album with cardstock or patterned paper may be the preferred choice for some, but for me, painting them was the way to go. I laid the pages out and applied a couple of coats of black paint to each.

While the paint was drying, I pulled the patterned papers out of the kit bag and chose the ones that I wanted to use for the backgrounds of the album pages.

Next, I traced around one of the 5-sided chipboard album pages two times onto each of the patterned papers that I selected. Then I cut them all out for a total of 16 ready-to-adhere background papers for my 16 album pages. 

I prefer using liquid glue to adhere the paper to the chipboard pages as it allows a few seconds to move the paper just where you want it before the glue is completely dry.

Once adhered, I punched the holes and then used my craft knife to trim the excess paper from the edges of the chipboard page.

I repeated this process for each page before moving on to the next process.

Next, I pulled out the patterned papers that I wanted to cut things from and got them all cut out.

I didn't take a photo to show you, but at this point I also take all of the stickers that I think I might use off of the backing and apply powder to their backs to cover their adhesive (essentially turning them into die cuts).

By this time, the paint is dry and the assembling can begin.

To build the pages, I adhered one or two of the cut-out elements to the background papers and then layered the photos on top, resulting in three basic layers on each page: 1) background paper 2) cut-out element 3) photo.

All that was left now was the fun process of adding the embellishments.

A tip here that I didn't take a photo of: lay each of your album pages out on your desk or floor, and divide your embellishments up evenly among them. I started with the stickers (which I had already turned into die cuts) and laid a sticker or two next to each page. Then I grabbed the button package and laid a button by each page, and then I did the same with the paper flowers, the actual flowers, and so on until all of the embellishments were divided up among the pages how I liked.

Planning out your background layers and your embellishment usage before adhering anything helps ensure you end up with a cohesive and balanced mini album.

If you would like to view the entire mini album, please visit our Design Team gallery where you will find it along with tons of completely amazing designs created by my teammates.

Here's the April Album kit that I used to design my mini album:

I also designed with our gorgeous April Main kit:

and here are some of the layouts that I created with it:

as well as our super fun April Creative kit:

and a couple of my layouts:

Thank you so much for making My Creative Scrapbook part of your creative day!

Kris Berc

My Creative Scrapbook Design Team member

My Creative Scrapbook kit club is all about you and helping you preserve your memories in a fun and creative way. For information about subscribing to any of our monthly kits, please visit our website, here.