Love Mini Workshop | Coffee Sleeve Mini Album

Good morning! Today I'm sharing a project that I made from a class from my favourite creative person ever Wilna Furstenberg. This post is not sponsored by her in any way, I'm just so over the moon with her classes that I keep raving about them here when I share my projects.

 

This particular project is part of her Love Mini Workshop (which is possibly my favourite class of hers). You can purchase that class HERE. She also offered this class last year on Two Peas in a Bucket, but she added a few extra projects and added it to her shop. I'm absolutely glad I purhcased it because I've learned so many amazing things from her, and have a few more mini albums I want to make!

I shared this photo on Instagram last week. I took the coffee sleeve, and painted it with Gesso, then decided that I didn't want it to be white, so after I stitched some chipboard to the inside (the sleeve was extremely flimsy) I painted it with watercolours. This wasn't the effect I was going for, but I went with it.

Then I embellished the cover. I didn't want to hide the watercolours, so I kept my embellishments to the left side. I used ephemera from Maggie Holmes' Open Book line, and a couple of labels from my stash. The orange thread was used to bind my pages.

Here's the cover once I added all my photos and embellishments to the inside pages. I wanted them to stick out the top a little bit, and tried to keep them from hanging out the bottom.

And a close up, just because it's too pretty not to share.

The inside pages contain papers and more flowers from the Open Book line, some words from Wilna that I cut out using my Silhouette, and photos from my adventures with my niece last year.

Some of the cutfiles I painted with watercolours. Of course it would have been smart to paint them before I put them on the pages, but I didn't, so a few were painted after I stuck them down.

I tried to keep the pages a little on the simple side, and only used paper embellishments. No flair, or extra bulk since I wasn't planning to tie the album closed.

The back was also painted white with Gesso. This is the only proof you have that it used to be a coffee sleeve. In person you can tell along the spine on the inside that it's cardboard under there, but I didn't want it to look like cardboard, or a coffee sleeve.

I'm so excited to create similar albums without actually using a coffee sleeve. I have a few in the works with watercolour paper, and different papers for pages (including a vellum page).

Thanks for coming to check out this mini album. I hope that it helps you to try and make a mini album from a recycled material. Wilna proves that you can create mini albums from literally anything.

Have a great day!
-Alexandria

DIY Pocket Mini Album | Part 2 - Creating the Pages & Finishing the Album

Good morning! Today I'm sharing how I made the pages for my Love Mini Album. You can find Part 1 - Making the Album Cover HERE. In this part, we'll be making the pages, and putting the whole thing together. After this your album will be ready for photos and embellishments! That's so exciting right? I had so much fun making this album, and I hope you learned something, and were able to make your own beautiful album! I'd love to see your finished projects, so you can leave a link in the comments, or let me know and I'll host a mini album link party.

Supplies:

• 9 Patterned Papers - unless you want more pages
• Score board (optional)
• Bone folder - to score and fold pages
• Sewing machine (optional)
• Double sided tape - I used my ATG
• Twine, string, or anything you could use to tie it closed (optional)

First, select your 9 papers that you want to use. I made my cover purple, and so I struggled a little bit with choosing papers, but in the end I think the papers I chose, will compliment the purple cover perfectly. All of the papers I chose are from the Maggie Holmes Open Book 12x12 paperstack. I chose neutrals, green/teal, and a little bit of pink and yellow. I think they look beautiful together!

 Next you're going to cut your papers down to 9 3/4" x  7. Or, if you made your album a different size, you're going to make it double the width of your front cover, minus 1/4", by however tall your album is. You have to take off the extra 1/4 inch so that when it's closed, the spine doesn't push the pages out beyond the edges of the covers. You also make them twice as wide as the cover so that you can fold them in half.

Once you have them cut to size, just score them and fold them in half, except for one paper that will go on your front cover. That paper gets cut in half and set aside.

After I scored and folded my papers I chose the order in which I wanted them to go in my album, and stacked them so they were in order from front to back.

Then I got out my sewing machine and stitched around the outside edges of all of my papers (individually). I didn't do this in my other album, but decided to do it for this one. You can skip this step if you don't want to sew on your pages, or if you don't have a sewing machine. If you want any additional stitching detail, AND still want to create pages with a pocket between them (like in my Love album), you'll have to do that now, or you'll sew your pockets closed.

I took one half of the paper I cut in half and adhered it to the inside of my front cover. Because of the size I cut it, it hides the uneven edges of the fabric, and goes all the way to the spine. I sewed around the edges of this paper before I adhered it to the cover, since I had already sewn the cover.

Once you've sewn all your other papers, decide whether you want your pockets to open at the top, or on the side. If you want them to open at the side, run your tape along the top and bottom (the short sides), and along the side where you're page is folded. If you want them at the top, don't put tape at the top, but run it around the other three sides. If you don't want pockets, run your adhesive around all the sides.

As you can see, my pocket is along the side (again). This is the very first page of my album, so I used the same paper that I used for inside my album cover. Adhere the rest of your pages together, just like your first page (unless you want to switch up where your pockets are on each page).

On your last page, run adhesive all over it. This page lifts a little bit when you flip to it, depending on how thick your other pages are, so don't worry about that. Just make sure you press it down so it stays in place.

Make sure your pages aren't over the gap where your back cover meets your spine. If they are, peel them off and move them further from the gap, otherwise your album won't close properly.

There you go. You're finished adding the pages to your album. Go ahead, flip through it and admire your handiwork.

LOVE LOVE LOVE this paper.

This is my last page. As you can see, the right side lifts a little bit, but that's only because I put 8 pages into it. If you did less, the last page wouldn't lift, but you also wouldn't be able to pack it full of love!

You have some extra space between your pages and front cover, but that's okay because once you start adding your embellishments and photos you're going to need that extra space for them to expand.

I added twine around my album, and to make sure the twine stayed on my album, I poked a hole in the spine of my cover and folded my twine so that when I wrapped it, the bow would fall on the front. Then I pulled it through the hole I made in the spine and tied a knot to secure it in place. I did the same thing for my Love album, but when I tied it closed, the bow was along the side with all the tags.

Here's what my finished album cover looks like. It's so perfectly me, and I'm so happy with how it turned out. It'll look beautiful on the shelf next to my other mini albums I've made.

If anyone knows where I can get some more chipboard, that would be great! I want to make a bunch more of these, and host a giveaway. Leave links to your projects in the comments, and I'll either host a link up, or a round up of my favourite albums!

Thank you for checking out this tutorial. I hope it helped you to make pretty albums!
Have a great day!
-Alexandria

DIY Pocket Mini Album | Part 1 - Creating the Cover

A few people asked me to share a tutorial on how I made my Love Mini Album (here). Today I'm sharing with you how I made the base of my album. I decided to split this into two parts because there's a lot of photos. I didn't think anyone wanted to spend two days reading through all of it!

Supplies:

• Chipboard or thick cardboard - I used some from the back of a fridge calendar
• masking tape
• Fabric - I used old white sheets and dyed it, but you could use a patterned fabric and skip that step
• Food colouring, ink refills, fabric dye or anything you can use to dye your fabric
• Glue stick or mod podge - I used a glue stick so I could reposition the fabric if necessary
• fabric tape, or washitape
• scissors
• plastic bag

First, we're going to cut our chipboard pieces to size. You can adjust this to whatever sizes you want, but to fit 4x6 photos into the pockets, you'll want your front and back cover to be 5x7. Your spine will be 1x7, unless you plan to make a lot of pages, then you can make it whatever width you want, just make sure it's the same height as your front and back cover.

Next you'll want to tape your spine to your covers. Make sure you leave a gap between them so your spine and covers can bend to close.

Wrap the tape around both sides, and tape the back cover to your spine as well. I used painters tape because I couldn't find any white masking tape.

Next you're going to cut your fabric. You'll need two pieces of fabric, one will be a couple of inches taller than the other, but they'll be the same width.

 Both should be a little bit larger than your album. I set my album on the fabric and cut/tore it to the desired size. The smaller piece is roughly 1" wider all around, and the larger piece is an extra 2" taller than the smaller piece.

Apply glue to the outside of your album cover. Lay your smaller piece of fabric on it and smooth it out. I close my album and smooth the spine and front and back covers to make sure the fabric won't pull when I try to close it. When it's opened flat, the fabric will bubble a little along the spine, but that's normal. It means your fabric won't pull. It doesn't have to be perfect because it'll be covered by your other piece of fabric.

 Turn your cover over and glue the extra fabric down. This makes sure it doesn't shift around or accidentally tear off the cover. It doesn't have to be pretty, it'll be covered by the second layer of fabric, and the paper.

Decide on the colour you want your cover to be. I used food colouring to dye both my Love Mini Album cover, and my Vintage Book Mini Album cover. I did them both in different ways.

For the Vintage Book cover, I put drops of food colouring onto the garbage bag I covered my desk with, and used the fabric to absorb the colour. The benefit of doing it this way, is that your colours tend to be more vibrant, it's just a lot more messy.

 For the Love Mini Album, and this one, I wanted more control over my colours. I put some water into a cup, and added a few drops of food colouring then added a strip of fabric. When it was the colour I wanted, I removed it, and gently ran my fingers down the length of the fabric to get out the excess water. Then I added more food colouring and another strip of fabric. When it was a little darker than the previous strip I removed it, added more colour and another strip.

I wanted an ombre look, and I knew my colours wouldn't be perfectly ombre (I've done this before), and I was okay with that. I just really wanted a purple album, and was okay if it wasn't a super dark purple.

I left my strips to dry on the plastic bag for a half hour. I left the ceiling fan on in the craftroom to help them dry a little faster. If you want them to dry even faster, you can use a paper towel, or an old rag and dab the strips to remove excess water.

When my strips were dry, I laid them out on my album cover. Because I cut my larger piece of fabric, two inches larger than the smaller one, I was able to overlap my strips of fabric. I didn't cut them all to be the same width, so overlapping them unevenly was okay with me.

When I decided where I wanted each strip, I gently slid them off and ran my glue stick along the first strip. I did the same thing I did when adhering the base fabric. I closed the album to make sure the strip wrapped around the album cover.

I glued down all the other strips the same as the first with slight overlap, and left a bit hanging over the top and bottom. I'm a perfectionist, but I love the messy-ness of this album cover.

On the inside, my purple edges weren't very even. I was okay with that because I knew I was going to cover them with my pages. This album currently looks like a mess on my desk, but by the end I promise that it won't!

Then I ran the album through my sewing machine. I only stitched around the outside edge, but you could sew this however you wanted. If you don't want any of your stitching to affect your pages, do it now before you add any pages, and you can still hide it.

Going back to the inside of your album, now is when you cover your spine with washitape. I used black washitape to hide the green masking tape, but you can use any colour you want! Just make sure that you push a little into the gap between the spine and the covers. I went out the width of my tape from the gap between the spine and the covers. The pages will hide all the tape except the portion on the spine.

Now you can set this aside and work on your Project Life pages, or watch something on Netflix! I'll be sharing Part Two of this - the inside pages and finishing touches - on March 6th. I'm working on that post right now, and I'm so excited for you to be able to finish your albums! You're going to love them!

Thanks for coming by! I hope you found this helpful! I'd love to see your mini albums, so please please please leave links to them in the comments. Even if it's just to a Facebook photo. I'd like to think that my tutorials help people create pretty things!

Have a great day!
-Alexandria