Fall Mini Album

Happy Fall Ya'll !   This is Debbie O'Neal aka ScrapHappyDeb of Debs Electic Thoughts Blog. Our Cricut FANatics October theme is  FALL  (Halloween, Fall, Thanksgiving projects of any type).  Our designers, of course, are free to share any type of project in October but I wanted to show you a FALL project.

I just love the colors of fall...warm reds, orange, browns, tans, etc.  Plus Fall items always seem to have a lot of texture too don't they?  So my project is a Fall Mini Album album I made recently for a swap I was in on the Circle MB.  I tried hard to incorporate the feeling and texture of fall in to it.

I used the new Mini Books Cricut Cartridge to create the mini album base. If you haven't bought this cartridge yet, I am issuing an enabling alert !  LOL   You will want to own this cartridge after seeing how easy it is to make one of the mini albums included.

I selected the Mini Book Accordian Album on page 13 of the handbook. The assembly directions are on page 27 of the handbook.

 

I wanted my book to be 6" wide so I cut it at 6".  But that meant that the length was longer than

a regular 12X12 mat so I used the 12X24 mat and a white poster board cut in half so I could make the cover as long as was needed.  

The cover was then folded at the scoring marks to create a 6 X 6 square.  Notice there

is a little tab where the open end of the cover is tucked.

Next I cut the three pieces at 6" that form the inside of the album again using the larger mat and poster board.  Once the three pieces were cut, you adhere them to create the accordian fold shown above.

Next I adhered one end of the accordian fold inside the cover. Then repeated with the other end on the opposite side of the inside cover.  This forms the base of your mini album.  It creates 8 pages for your book.

 

Now on the the fun part...decorating the mini album !

I used the patterned paper and journaling cards from the new Simple Stories Harvest Lane line.  Yummy colors and patterns in this fall line were perfect for my Fall album.  I covered the square album pages by cutting the patterned papers and solid colored cardstock into 5 3/4" X 5 3/4" squares and inked the edges and adhered to each page of the album.  For the outside cover of the album

I  hand cut the patterned paper for the curved piece of the album cover.  Where that little flap was cut, I used my exacto knife to make the slice in the patterned paper so it could still be used.  I put some jute twine in a button and then used a glue dot to adhere it to the little flap.

 As I mentioned above, I cut the squares of patterened paper and cardstock and adhered to each page to form the base.  I used some Washi Tape to adhere some of the cute paper embellishments and journaling cards to the inside of the album pages.

You can see here where I made sure an added the Washi Tape on both sides of the journaling card so that it now flips over in the book like a page.  I even added some Washi Tape as a bit of embellishment on the cardstock page.

I repeated the process of alternating cardstock pages and patterned paper through out the album and the journaling cards and Washi tape.

It was fun alternating the patterns and colors.

On the last page I made a pocket out of cardstock cut from page 16 and embellished it with some Washi Tape.  Instead of the tag for the pocket, I used one of the SS Harvest Lane Bingo cards and added a button with jute twine to it for the free space on the card.

 

To finish off the cover there is a band that goes around the mini album.  I used a gold foil paper and the Autumn Type Cuttlebug folder to emboss it.  Layered some felt flowers I cut out with my Cuttlebug and used a button with jute for the center of the flowers.  I tied some just to the other end of the band to fnish it off. 

 

Since this project was for a swap, I also included the matching set of embellishment stickers and alphas and a baggie of embellishments so the receiver could add the final touches to the mini album to match the photos they put in it. 

 

I can hardly wait to make more mini albums using this cartridge !!!  Happy Fall Ya'll

 

Cricut Info and Supplies Used: 

Designed By: Debbie O'Neal aka ScrapHappyDeb

Cricut Machines Used: Expression and Cuttlebug

Cricut Cartridges Used: Mini Books

Other Supplies Used: Autumn Type Embossing Folder, Simple Stories Harvest Lane Paper and journaling cards, felt, gold foil cardstock, buttons, jute twine, ink, washi tape