Mini Album (start to finish) 6 1/2 x 4 1/2

Hi, it's Corinne for Cut at Home, and I wanted to share a little mini album with you today. I do have a full start to finish on this that I will play here in just a moment, but quickly I wanted to show you the paper line I used is CraftSmith Blush Glam. I used the Spellbinders Nest Abilities Classic Scalloped Oval Die, and a die from Marianne Design Creatables. It's called English Rose. It comes with a large rolled flower, a smaller rolled flower, and a few leaves. So I'll have all this information linked at Cut at Home's blog, but just to quickly show you the album, I did not finish the inside of it yet. I will finish this once I add photos and I'll put pictures of this on my Instagram, but on the front here I just added some banner strips, a piece of the pattern paper with some chipboard behind it to give it a little bit of dimension, and I just kind of rolled up the edges. On the front here I used that Classic Scalloped Die and cut it out from the paper collection. This sparkles here was from the paper collection. I used an oval punch to punch that out, and then here are the 2 rolled flowers and a tiny little flower from Wild Orchid Crafts, and to the rolled flowers I added 2 little pearls to the center, a little bit of hot glue. So those are super adorable, and each page has a scalloped cutout frame for a photo to slide in and out. So again, I will finish decorating this and put photos up on my Instagram if you're interested in seeing those, but for now stay tuned for the start to finish and check out Cut at Home's blog for all the information, and I do have step-by-step instructions on the blog as well. Thanks for stopping by. Okay, so to get started, I have prepped a lot of this work just because some of it is redundant and would take a long time on camera, but I will walk you through everything that I've done, and as I've already mentioned, I will have everything recapped on Cut at Home's blog, so you can find the step-by-step directions on Cut at Home's blog along with links to all the products used today. So for my paper, this is the product that I'm using, or this is the paper that I'm using. It's by Neenah, and it's the Craft Midtone. I get this at Walmart. This is the 65 pound weight. So the first thing that I am going to work on is the album cover. You need 2 pieces of chipboard that are 6-1⁄2 by 4-1⁄2. You need a spine piece that is 4-1⁄2 by 7⁸. And for my paper covers, what I've done is, again, these are 4-1⁄2 inches tall, so I made these at 5-1⁄2 inches tall, and I did not cut down the length. We will cut down the length after we glue on or at least measure out our cover pieces, which I've done here. So just to explain, I just took 2 pieces of 11-inch paper by 8-1⁄2. I'm using the Angel Craft Tape in 1-1⁄2 inch and 1-1⁄4 inch throughout this project. You want to use a strong double-sided adhesive. So I took the 1-1⁄2 inch, added it onto the edge of one of the papers, and adhered them together. So as an example, I took the 2 papers, added my 1-1⁄2 inch, placed it on there, and that gives me my long sheet, which is right here. So now we can go ahead, I've marked these off just for demonstration, because this is extra. You only want about 1⁄2 inch around the entire border to wrap around your chipboard. So let's go ahead and adhere this down. I've already added my tape. I'm going to remove the tape from all my pieces, and I also like to add wet glue to the inside. I really want to make sure it's adhered down well. It's not necessary, but I like to do it because if you're putting something heavy on the cover piece, it could bubble out if it's being pulled. So just to avoid that, I like to add wet glue to the entire inside, which I'll show you here in just a moment. So this is my spine piece. None of this has to be perfect, but you want to leave yourself 1⁄2 inch at the top and the bottom. I like to measure this out. Again, this can just be eyeballed. I'm just going to grab my ruler here, mark down 1⁄2 inch, 1⁄2 inch on this side. This just gives me a quick guide to go by so I know that I'm leaving myself enough room to wrap around my papers, and press it down. Now you want to add your front and back cover. This is where I add my glue, and you want to leave approximately 1⁄8 inch in between so when it folds, you have room. I've made myself a template. It's 2 pieces of the same chipboard. That way I know that's approximately 1⁄8 inches, and then I can easily put it on without having to eyeball it. I like to work from the right, so I'm flipping that around to make it a little bit easier for myself. Add my wet glue and adhere it down. Any parts throughout this video I can fast-forward through, I will, just to save time, otherwise the video would be very long. Like I said, I've pre-measured so I know that I can cut this off, otherwise if you're folding that over that's just a complete waste of tape and it would be bulky, so I'm just going to trim this off, and then we're going to add our adhesive and miter the corners, and we're mitering the corners almost all the way up to the chipboard, again leaving 1⁄8 inch so when we fold it there's no bulk, so I will do that in fast play. Here I've just tucked in my corners, that way it gives me a neater edge once I fold it. I'm just tucking that in on all the corners before I fold this side piece in. And then really press it down with your bone folder or a brayer, whatever you have. Now you will lightly want to bend it, and here is going to be our cover. I will add paper to the inside of this in just a moment. I do want to explain that for the hinge, I did my hinge first and that's how I decided the size spine that I needed because I'm working with 4 pieces of paper for the inside, 4 pockets, or 4 pages I should say, so I needed 2 pieces of the same paper at 4 1⁄8, because my pockets are going to be 4 1⁄4, so I made it just a tiny bit smaller. So you need them at 4 1⁄8 by 1 3⁄4, 4 1⁄8 by 1 1⁄4, then you're going to fold this middle one, or the smaller one I should say, add glue to just the middle, and glue it onto this. And when you fold on those score lines, this is what you will have. Again I'm making 4 pages, if you were making 6 you would need to do another hinge as well. This is the Laura Denison Stack the Deck binding method. So let me just, this one I did as an example, it's not glued down very well, so let me make another one real quick since I don't want my pen lines on there, I'll be right back. Okay so I cut my 2 pieces by 4 1⁄8 by 1 3⁄4 and 1 1⁄4, and now I need to score them. And I'm scoring them in at 1 1⁄2 inch on both sides. So 1 1⁄2 inch, flip it around and do 1 1⁄2 inch, same with the little one, you want it on the 1 1⁄4 inch side, score it at 1 1⁄2 inch, flip it around, 1 1⁄2 inch. And you want to bend along those little folds here where it bumps up, that will give you a nicer fold. So fold along those score lines. I'm only going to fold along the smaller one, the 1 1⁄4 at first because it will be easier to glue it down. And I will go ahead and use the Angel Craft Tape. Sometimes when it's a small piece like this I'll just use wet glue, but I really want to make sure this holds well. And you just want to center it in between the two score lines on this. Burnish that down, and now when you fold it, this will give you your hinge for your four pages. Again, if you're making more than four pages you would need to add more hinges to it, but I'm making four, so there it is. And I already made one of these, measured out my spine piece, and that's how I determined what I needed for my spine in here. So let's set all of this aside and work on our pages. I've already prepped a lot of the work, but I want to do some of it on camera to walk you through it. For the inside pages you need a piece of the craft cardstock that is cut to 9 by 6 1⁄4, and on the 9 inch side you want to score it at 1 1⁄2", and 4 3⁄4". I also very slightly mitered the corners, that way when we fold it we will have a nicer fold. So I have a piece here that I saved to do on camera. I am putting it in on the 9 inch side, and again I'm scoring it at 1 1⁄2", and 4 3⁄4". So now again I want to miter those corners, I'm just taking a slight amount off each side, the one with the tab. And now this will be our tab, so I'm going to add my double sided tape. We're not going to fold it yet, we want to go ahead and add our pattern paper. So I have 3 papers here, this one is going to be our pattern paper for the front, and this is 6 1⁄8 by 4 1⁄8". And then we have some for the inside, but let's go ahead and just do the outside first. I did add my adhesive around the entire parameter of it, but I also wanted to add tape to the middle piece as well, because we're going to be cutting our oval out of that, and we want that oval to stick down once it's cut. So I didn't add any tape right in the middle because I know that's where my oval die is going to be cutting out, but I did want to add it to the sides and the top and bottom of where that oval will lie. So just center this as best you can on your pocket, and I'm adding it in between that tab score and my second score line. So the next thing we want to do is use our dies, and I'm using the largest die and the second largest die. The only one we're actually going to be cutting out of this pocket page is the second largest die. I like to set my largest die on there, though, just to gauge where it is on the page. It helps me eyeball the center of it a little bit better. So I'm just trying to get it even. If it's not perfect, I don't think anyone would ever notice, but you want it to be close to perfect. So once I'm happy with that, I'm just going to hold down that second piece and move the first one, tape it down. Now I'm going to run it through my Big Shot machine, and it is cutting through some pretty thick cardstock. This pattern paper is pretty thick, so I'm going to run it probably through three or four times. Now we can punch that out, take off our tape, and we can save this for another project. And now it cut all the way through our first side of our pocket. The next thing we want to do is take a piece of scrap paper in the same cardstock and line up our dies. We're running through the first largest and second largest, and this is going to give us a frame for the top of our pocket. Once we run it through, we're going to end up with a frame like this, and that will go over the top of our pocket. So I'm going to glue that on and I'll be right back. So I have that glued on. I cut two more pieces of paper that are going to go on the inside of our pocket. One is at Clear Transparency, or you can use Acetate. Cut It Home also sells clear cardstock, so I will link to that in the blog post. I added my tape to the entire outside of this, because we're going to glue it behind our cutout. You don't have to worry about this tape being seen. So now just center that over your pocket. Now this acetate piece was cut to 5 by 3-3 1⁄4", and I also cut another piece of pattern paper that is also cut to 5 by 3-3 1⁄4". This is optional. This is going to sit behind our pocket just for decoration until photos are added, or if you're giving this as a gift, it's just for decoration. So I added my tape to 3 sides. You do not want to add it to the 4th side, because that's where the photo will slip in and out, and you want to add it to the right side of your paper, because we're going to be placing it that way down. So let me go ahead and remove my tape backing, and decide which way your pocket will go. So I'm going to have my photo slide in on this way, so I don't want the tape there. I want to make sure that I leave that side open, and just adhere this down. And now we can go ahead and fold on our score marks. You have the option to add your other piece of pattern paper now. You're going to want to cut out another piece of pattern paper that is 6 1⁄8 by 4 1⁄8". I'm going to add that later after I put it in my book. So let me just fold on these score marks. Remove my tape backing, and adhere my pocket down. So now you will have one side where your photo will slide in, and on the other side it will attach to your hinge. I just happen to have a little photo here, I'm going to cut it down just a little bit. You're going to have to use custom sized photos for this. Just slide it in between that acetate and that paper, and look how adorable that is. I've already prepped the other pockets, and again I made four of them. So one side of the album will be slipped into our hinge, so in order to do that I'm going to add adhesive to these hinges, and I'll be right back. I've added my tape to all the flaps of my hinge, and you want to add it to the back as well. This is what will be adhering to your mini album, to your spine. I'm going to use the 1⁄2 inch tape here, and then a piece of the 1⁄4 inch. You want to make sure you have tape going across that entire binding piece because that's what's going to be adhering to your spine. Now let's add our pages. Now you can add your decorative paper on the back. You could have done that at first as well. I wanted to do it afterwards. You're going to use the same size that you used for your base piece, which is 6-1⁸ by 4-1⁸. So I will do that and be right back. So I adhered my papers onto the back sides. Now back to our cover. Since our cover measures approximately a little over 14 inches and a 12 inch piece of paper will not fit across, I'm going to add a piece of the same craft cardstock to the center, and then I will add decorative paper to the front and back. So I cut a piece that is 4-3⁸ by 4-1⁸. When I was making my covers, I made sure to add tape to the edge where my album will open and close. If you do not have tape on the edge of your spine in your covers, it will bubble there. Your paper will bubble. That's very important to make sure that you have tape covering the edge where your book will fold. So I'm just going to center that, press that down, and now with my bone folder I will gently crease it right where the book wants to fold. I will gently press this down. If you press too hard, you will crack your paper. So just go slowly with it to both sides, and I'm just going to be very careful with that. Now I can add my decorative paper to the front and back cover. So my two inside pieces and outside pieces are 6-3⁸ by 4-3⁸. I'm going to adhere those down. So I put my front and back covers on, my inside covers, and my spine piece is 4-3⁸ by 7⁸. I'm going to add my book to the inside of my covers, remove the backing. Make sure you have it going the correct way, and just try and center it the best that you can, leaving yourself a tiny gap between the front and back cover, and once you're happy with it, just press it down right there along those gussets. And now all that is left is to decorate it, so I'll put it in fast play. Again, all the measurements will be listed on Cut at Home's blog. If you have any questions, please leave me a comment. Thanks so much for watching.