Good morning everyone! Anya here today to share with you a gift album I created for my niece. There’s a number of ways to make these and I wanted to show you how fun and easy creating an album from scratch may actually be. This mini book measures about 5.5×6” and holds about 25 photos.

To create a cover, I used three pieces of heavy cardstock: two pieces measure 5.5×6” and one 5.5×1.25”. I also used a piece of faux leather (I stitched mine from three pieces) measuring about 6.5×14.5”). To make the cover soft, I also added a piece of cotton batting trimmed to about 5.5×13.5” and glued it between cardstock pieces and faux leather.

Using strong tape I attached the leather to the inside of the cover and stitched all around to secure it in place. To decorate the cover, I used a few pieces of patterned paper that were also stitched down and added some flowers, chipboard pieces, enamel dots and brads. Using a scoreboard I created the inside pages for the album by stitching a few folded 5.5×12” pieces of white cardstock to the base, spacing each one 0.25” apart and adhering them inside to the album cover with strong double-sided adhesive.

Now my album is ready to be decorated. This is always the fun part! I used a number of different collections that matched in color to decorate all of my pages.

I also added a few interactive elements inside the album like pockets and folded pages to hold more photos and ephemera. Since my pages are spaced out it lets me add some bulk inside.

For each page, I added a die cut a white frame to hold a photo. To cut those I used the Stitched Rectangle Die Set by Echo Park and a die cutting machine.

Can’t wait to give this mini book to my niece so that it can be filled with precious memories! Happy crafting everyone!

Supplies: Cardstock: Carta Bella; Patterned Paper: Crate Paper, Simple Stories, Heidi Swapp, My Mind’ Eye; Stickers: Simple Stories; Chipboard: Crate Paper, Simple Stories; Brads: Echo Park Paper; Faux Leather: Cricut and other; Silk Flowers: Michaels; Adhesives: Scrapbook Adhesives, Glue Dots, Mono Multi Liquid Glue; Dies: Echo Park, Cheery Lynn; Enamel Dots: Echo Park; pink silk ribbon.

~ Anya Lunchenko