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