Spring Memories Mini Album

Hello crafters, it’s Terri back on the blog today with a tutorial for a bright and fun way to store your memories! I used pre-coloured images from the No Place Like Gnome and Garden Grown packs along with super cute letters made from little tree branches from the New Growth Alpha set for this project.

There are so many different ways of memory keeping and I know many of you enjoy digital scrapbooking. I tend to like to make things with my hands using crafting materials like dies, so I used a simple die set from Tonic Studios to make the pages for this album. This one is so easy, it has a really easy binding system as you basically just have to die cut one shape, score it a few times and it makes one and a half pages, with the binding mechanism built in. There are many different memory album systems from different brands on the market and I have also made my own by using greyboard for the covers, which I covered with faux leather paper.

Firstly, I added lots of pre-coloured images to two text documents and re-sized them. I love how fun and bright the images are! I also used the alpha set to create the phrase “Spring Memories” for the front cover, ensuring I left enough blank space around the phrase to be able to use a decorative die to cut it out for the cover.

I fussy cut out all of the images and chose brightly coloured card stock in blue, orange and yellow for the pages of the memory book, along with bright patterned paper which matched the colours of the pages and images.

I then die cut 7 of the memory album pages, along with cutting decorative layers of patterned paper from the colourful papers I had chosen, to glue on top of the pages for decoration.

Next came the fun part of deciding what each of my pages would look like! For the front cover I decide to join two of the pages together so they opened up like a gatefold card to show a super cute scene of some little gnomes and their mushroom house. I used some patterned paper with a sky pattern on and used a grass die on some green card stock to create a grassy hillside for the scene.

I then went through my pile of decorative papers and chose ones I thought would work well together in the book and picked ones that would complement the colours of the pages.

I pulled out a few other dies from my stash to embellish the mini album pages further. I used a die that creates a small triangular pocket, which can be used to hold photos, notes, recipes, ticket stubs etc. After adding the die cut paper layers on to the pages, I added the little triangular pockets and then die cut some little notes and added a few pieces of brown note paper into the slots too. I decorated each page with the cute images of the Gnomes, the gardening supplies and the plants and it was so much fun to create!

After embellishing and decorating all of the pages, I decided to leave the reverse of each page blank so that a photograph could be stuck there, for example a photograph of the garden, or a trip taken in spring or a favourite spring meal etc.

Binding the pages together was really easy. I had used a die included in the die set (but you could use a hole punch or crop-o-dile if making your own version) to create a series of holes along the left hand side of the pages. I then chose some pretty yellow and white bakers twine and thread it though each of the holes using a blunt needle, and back up again, tying it off in a bow on the reverse. Here are some photos of the completed book. I think this would be perfect for a Christmas or Birthday gift, or you could make a book for each season and gift them as a set if you wanted to make it really special!

I’d love to know what you think of this hybrid project. Do you combine digital images with traditional crafting materials like stamps and dies? I’ll see you again very soon with some more crafty inspiration.

Happy crafting and see you again soon,
Terri/Veegstez Creates xxx