Snippets By Mendi: Mini Albums

Showing posts with label Mini Albums. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Jo' s Birthday Blog Hop with Pebbles Family Ties Mini Album

Hello there! Today my scrappy friend and loyal blog follower, Jo Williams at Jo's Scrap Shack is celebrating her 4th blogaversary and asked if I would join in. Of course I wanted to help her celebrate!

You should be arriving here from Kellie's blog or if you are just joining in you can start at the beginning at Jo's blog. There are lots of great prizes up for grabs from lots of awesome sponsors so make sure to check that out at the bottom of this post. ;)

She asked each of us to share a non-card type project so I have a sweet mini album using some of my favorite papers from my stash from Pebbles Family Ties collection.

Pebbles Inc. Family Ties Mini Album by Mendi Yoshikawa

Years ago I bought these "edgy" mini albums by Bo Bunny in every color and I thought it was finally time to put one to use (I still have so many in my stash). I love how they allow you to see a peek of each set of pages below and how you can show off a lot of pretty patterned papers at a glance.

Sadly I realize these particular mini albums are hard to come by these days, but you can fashion a similar version by cutting it from Silhouette chipboard using some great cutting files by Lori Whitlock found HERE.

I had so much fun personalizing each set of pages with their own unique touches (you can click on the photos and scroll through them to see them larger).

Thanks so much for stopping by and taking a peek. I hope I've inspired you to get some of your favorite family photos documented in a fun mini album perfect for your coffee table.

Your next stop in the hop is Linsey's Blog. If you happen to get lost, here's a list of the full line-up for this two-day blog hop event. ;)

Day 1- May 3rd

Day 2- May 4th

There are some awesome sponsors and prizes up for grabs...

Jo's Scrap Shack - $15 Silhouette Store
Scrapper's Delight's - 3 Digital Stamps
DoubleClick Connections- 3 bags of Skittles
Sunny Studio Stamps- $20 gift voucher
Little Blue Button Stamps- $15 gift voucher
Lawn Fawn- 1 Stamp Set & a 6x6 paper pad
Bugaboo Digital Stamps- $30 gift voucher

All hoppers must leave a comment and subscribe to each designer's blog to be eligible to win prizes. You have until 11:50 pm EST on May 6th to leave comments and winners will be announced on May 7th on Jo's Scrap Shack.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Doodlebug Design Goal! Soccer Mini Album with Download

Hi there! I'm excited to be sharing a fun project on the Doodlebug blog today using their newest Goal! collection (along with 8 sheets of 6x6 raw chipboard I had on hand).

I knew immediately when I saw these darling papers, I needed to make a special mini album as a gift for my Stepdad. His daughter was a soccer champ and now he has a little grandson who is following in his Mom's footsteps so I thought it would be fun to give him an album to collect all his treasured photos in. :)

I was only given a few pictures to start the album off with so the remaining pages have been left open. I plan to make this a gift that keeps on giving. As my Stepdad acquires new pictures, I will print them off and size them to fit in his little album.

Today I am offering a free download HERE for the cutting files I created for some of the special pages in this mini album, including the curved label for the front cover, the scalloped pages for the soccer ball sprinkles seen below and the curved labels for the last set of pages.

While some of the pages are pretty simple in design I wanted to resist the urge to get too specific. I decided it would be easier to use later with photos of any orientation if I didn't paint myself into a corner design wise.

For the last set of pages in the book, I designed it to fit a series of baseball sized cards (or in this case soccer cards).

I just love the soccer ball die-cuts in this collection. I thought they were really fun to design with and I had fun finding new ways to incorporate them on the different pages.

In the end I was able to use 8 of the 12 papers that come with the collection pack and a great deal of the matching embellishments for my project. Since we don't personally play soccer, I love that I was able to put nearly every last bit to good use without a lot of waste.

I hope I have inspired you to make a special keepsake album of your own. Keep in mind this project could easily be made with the baseball or basketball papers instead simply by switching out the balls so if soccer's not your game, this would be perfect for the other sports as well. ;)

Interested in the products I used to create my projects today? To make supplies easier for you to find, I have listed them below (affiliate links included).

Supplies Used (available at Scrapbook.com)

Thursday, January 2, 2014

A Lori Whitlock December Daily Silhouette Album

I'm so excited to finally be sharing a handful of my finished December Daily album pages on Lori Whitlock's blog that I created as a part of her Silhouette Basics Class over at Jessica Sprague! It is such a well-taught class that will teach you so many functions on your Silhouette!

In the class, Lori walks students through creating a darling 31-page album full of all sort of pockets, tags and all different shaped pages held together by big binder rings. Knowing a "December Daily" type album might take a bit of a beating with repeated viewings over the years, I decided to alter her designs to fit a 6x6 We R Memory Keepers album (a personal favorite of mine).

I tried my best to stay true to Lori's designs and retain all the pockets & shapes that Lori includes.

I created my album using papers from My Mind's Eye's "12 Days of Christmas" collection from a couple years ago. I had acquired doubles of many of these papers and this album made a wonderful dent in my stash.

I kept my embellishments to a minimum, partially out of lack of space and also in an effort to keep my album as flat as possible. My little book was already quite fat before adding photos and I was determined to have it sit flat on a bookcase shelf. I added some of the collection's cardstock cutouts sprinkled throughout the album to add a little interest, but I think Lori's design are so cute on their own. ;)

Over the past couple of years I have collected a fun collection of December Daily themed stamps from Technique Tuesday so I was thrilled to finally have so many opportunities to use them!

In the class Lori provides a Polaroid frame and one of her fonts to make lots of cute combinations. I thought they were perfect for showcasing our tradition of buying a new ornament for each of my kids (and myself) every year. My kids will take these ornaments with them when they leave home and they get such a thrill picking one that best represents their interests that year.

Since I had pre-made my pages in late November, I wasn't able to journal on the background pages like I might with one of my 12x12 layouts. I solved this by using lots of journaling strips, a few pennants here and there and even some vellum.

I'm still playing catch up on getting my photos printed from Christmas so that's all I have for now, but I hope I've inspired you to try a December Daily album. I know it will be a cherished keepsake for our family to remember a typical December with all of our favorite traditions for years to come.

Technique Tuesday Stamps Used:

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Day 30- Holiday Wrap Up & December Daily Peek

I apologize this post is coming so late... I had great intentions of finishing up my holiday series with a bang, but my post for Lori Whitlock's blog ended up being rescheduled for next week which left me a bit empty handed and without a project to share today. ;)

Unfortunately with all the energy and anticipation of planning for the holidays, now that Christmas is over I feel like crawling into bed and pulling the covers over my head. I'm completely exhausted. Anyone else feeling this way?

I decided for my last installment I would share a sneak peek of what is to come on January 2nd when I will be sharing most of my completed December Daily album on Lori Whitlock's blog.

I also had a handful of Christmas cards that were featured over at Paper Crafts & Scrapbooking magazine's blog this past week which can be seen HERE, HERE and HERE.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and continue to enjoy this week of unwinding from the holiday frenzy. :)

Thursday, July 25, 2013

A Jillibean Soup "Our Happy Home" Mini Album

I'm very excited to finally share a mini album that I made almost exactly one year ago for the Jillibean Soup design team tryouts. I put a ton of work into this little baby so when I didn't make the team I decide to hold onto it for submissions. I was thrilled when Creating Keepsake accepted it for their newest All About Albums special issue which just hit newsstands on July 23rd!

This album started out as an wood arrow shaped album by Kaiserkraft which was intended to be used horizontally, but I turned it up on it's end and made it into a little house of sorts. I had a blast using a mixture of several different collections of Jillibean using their B-side prints, labels and alphabet stickers--I love how so many of their lines mix and match in color! This album also gave me a good excuse to pull out all of my home themed stamps which I paper-pieced to match. I won't lie... This album took a bit of time, but it is a great keepsake to set out on the coffee table and it was a lot of fun to create. :)

To embellish my album, I used the following stamp sets:
Papertrey Ink On My Couch
Papertrey Ink Lighten Up
Hero Arts Wish You Were Here
Gel-a-tins Pet Shop

Make sure to check out more sneak peeks of this awesome special issue HERE. It's filled with so many great ideas! :)

Monday, March 11, 2013

A Lori Whitlock Sweet Girl 2-page Layout

It's Monday which means I have the privilege of sharing another project over at Lori Whitlock's blog today!

For today's layout I got to play with the new papers she created for Echo Park called "Sweet Girl". In fact with the exception of my cardstock, I made this entire layout with a 6x6 pad! They really are such playful & versatile papers. I love her little pie chart paper and how they mimic the look of beach balls for my summer layout.

I had so much fun playing with Lori's layout files for the blog hop (shared HERE) that I decided to give them another go in a 8x8 format. I am keeping a small album for my mother-in-law in Japan and this layout file was so perfect for my needs. I took Lori's single page Summer Layout found HERE and I mixed it up a bit by rearranging all the existing elements to match a sketch I had already planned out. I'm telling ya... I love how many elements you get with these files!

I took the sunshine shape and duplicated them 3 times in various sizes, dispersing them through the layout to create a visual triangle. You can never have too much sun here in the NW. ;)

For the notebook paper journaling card I enlarged it be basically 4 times as large. However, I didn't want to simply enlarge it and have an oversized notebook torn edge so I duplicated the shape 4 times and lined them up with two on the top and two of them on the bottom. Afterwards I just welded them together to form my larger mat.

For my title, I couldn't really truthfully use the SUMMER word because these were taken in Hawaii during the dead of winter so I once again mixed it up by using Lori's Summer Fun Titles found HERE.

The "Soak up the" portion was originally attached to the word "sun", but using my knife feature I chopped off the excess and cut it out as shown. Then once it was passed through my Silhouette, I just took my scissors and cleaned up the bottom edges to make it match better. Below is a screen shot showing my design process and how I planned the colors and sizes before cutting into my precious paper. :)

Thanks so much for stopping by. If you haven't given Lori's layout files a try yet, I highly recommend checking them out. More styles are available HERE. I'll be back next Monday to share another fun "Sweet Girl" layout I've been working on from this same vacation. ;)

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

An Exciting Announcement

Do you see something new at my blog today?!! Look over there to the right... I have been bubbling over with excitement with news that I'm finally able to share! Lori Whitlock invited me to be a part of her Creative Team for the next 6 months!!! I'm beyond thrilled to have this opportunity to work with her and all her products!

If you're not familiar with the name, I am sure you own a few of her products without even realizing it. She has oodles of talent designing everything from numerous collections for Echo Park, shapes for Silhouette America (over 1800!), ultra inspiring digital kits available at Jessica Sprague, upcoming project life products with Becky Higgins and even beautiful fabrics through Riley Blake Designs. Phew, that's quite the list... You can see all her wonderful offerings at her blog here and her full Silhouette shapes portfolio here. :)

To kick off this amazing adventure I thought I would share a project that I made for her design team call... This project uses a paper collection Lori designed for Echo Park called This and That~ Graceful. The metal tin was leftover packaging from an old Silhouette gift card from the early days before they offered subscription plans. I made this as a gift album to give to my grandmother as some happy mail.