Mini-Album with Carta Bella Paper & Tonic Studios Dies

Mini Album with Carta Bella and Tonic Studios

I had so much fun creating this mini-album for my mother-in-law. I loved it so much, I almost wanted to keep it in the end. Rest assured, I did send it off to my MIL. 🙂 Check out my Mini Album Gallery for photos of this album (and others).

I did get my husband’s opinion a lot along the way. He’s actually a very good crafting buddy! He gave me some great suggestions and had some special requests that made me either research or figure out some new (to me) techniques. So not only did we end up with a fabulous album but I also learned a lot along the way.

Unfortunately, I was on a bit of a time crunch so I didn’t film a tutorial style video for this, but you can check out the showcase video and if there’s a layout or technique you want more detail on, I’ll incorporate it into my next mini-album (there’s always going to be a next one) and turn on the camera when I go to make it!

Showcase

Album Page Layouts

Some of the more fun interactive layouts in this mini-album include:

Expanding/exploding flower. This was on the inside front cover.
Shaker photo frame. Nothing new here but this was the first time I made one. So much fun! I’ve already made another one since.
Nested page pull-out. This is the last page layout. I don’t know if there are tutorials on this since this is one I sort of figured out on my own. It’s not rocket science though, so I’m sure you could do the same.
Foam-lined rounded pockets. Since the page has rounded corners, I used foam to line the exterior of the pocket. Not only does it add depth to the pocket so it can hold more but it seals the entire pocket — even the curved corners.
Wrapped heavyweight chipboard rounded corner cover. Again, since the pages were rounded, the cover needed to be too. I hand-cut a slightly larger cover and mimic’ed the rounded corner of the pages. (The largest die in the Life’s Journey die set cuts 7×7 but I like for my cover to be larger than my album pages.) I was able to wrap the cover like normal even around the rounded corners. Again, this isn’t rocket science and I’m sure plenty of other folks have done it but this was a first for me.