DIY...at Home: Chipboard Mini Album Workshop

Right now I'm putting together the Tip Sheet for the Chipboard Album class I'm teaching tomorrow at the scrapbook store where I work, Whimzee's Scrapbook Studio in Beaverton, Oregon.  I originally wrote the parts of this post as a DIY class for the store blog.  As I was doing research for my class, I realized that I haven't put many classes (workshops, tutorials or whatever you want to call them) on this blog.  I think I'm going to start including some here, so everyone can see how I put together my projects and maybe they'll want to try something new.  I have a few on the store blog, so I'll probably use those first while I figure out what to share with you all next.  If you want to get a head start on the rest of the class, zip on over to the Whimzee's Girls Online Blog and click on classes down the right side column, I've got a few fun mini album classes over there.  I'm off to get everything together for tomorrow, so I hope you enjoy your Friday!  And don't forget stop by my friend Ann's Virtual Girls Night Out tonight, she's lamenting being older than PACMAN and I'm right there with her!

PART 1 - Gathering the Supplies

I want to share how easy it is to create a mini-album with a Bo Bunny My Word chipboard album. I chose the PARTY album. For your own project, feel free to choose any of their albums (or any other chipboard album that suites your fancy). The techniques are interchangeable between chipboard albums.

See all of Bo Bunny's My Word Albums and check out their completed projects on their website.  Click HERE for Bo Bunny's Tips & Tricks for these albums. 

I started with my PARTY album, Junkitz Salsa Celebration collection papers, Creative Imaginations Art Warehouse Candles & Cakes collection papers, craft paint, Creative Cafe rings, Blossoms & Leaves by Creative Impressions, any coordinating ribbons I could find.....and most importantly Spray Adhesive.

As far as tools, I like to cut with my large Fiskars paper cutter. I used my lime green Doodlebug Designs craft knife and cutting pad, it's so nice when things can be so useful and also so stylish! I used Glue Dots and Hermafix squares to attach the embellishments on my pages. I decorated my pages with Fiskars Acrylic Stamps, brown ink and numerous shapes cut out in the store on the Cricut using the Alphalicious font cartridge. I love the Cricut! We have it available for you to use in the store for a $2 fee. It's so easy to use and we have lot's of fonts for you to choose from.

So after collecting all of my supplies, I was ready to start the project.

PART 2 - Choosing & Adhering the Paper

First I take a look at both sides of each paper. I use double-sided papers for the Bo Bunny albums. I make sure I choose papers that are truly 12 x 12 inches in size. (Just a few of our papers are slightly smaller than 12 x12.) I trim any white strips from the edges, on these papers there were white strips showing the manufacturer & collection names, UPC, etc. Next, I cut each piece in half, forming a 6 x 12 inch piece. I sort them and flip them from front to back, just seeing which patterns I like together.

When you make one of these albums, you have to choose a paper to cover both sides of each letter. So be sure to look over your choices for, say the back of the P and the front of the A, to be sure they look nice together. It's possible to mix & match small prints with large, dark backgrounds with light. As long as you choose papers that coordinate, it makes no difference if the papers come from the same collection. For this project, I choose two collections that I like together. If you aren't confident you can mix the collections, lay everything you like together on a table in the store and see what you think. Don't be afraid to ask one of the Whimzee's Girls for help, or ask someone who's scrapping that day, everyone has an opinion and one person might see something another misses. If you want a fail safe, quick way to choose your papers, pick them from one large collection. Some of our collections are very deep in their choices. Some of my favorites are Bo Bunny, Basic Grey, Chatterbox, Cosmo Cricket, Little Yellow Bicycle and Reminisce.

After I choose my papers, I use spray adhesive to adhere the paper to the chipboard. I like to use spray adhesive outside or in the garage. Not only does it have a strong odor, but the over spray creates a sticky surface on everything it touches.....your table, floor, carpet, etc. I spray the front of each letter and carefully lay the paper I have chosen for its front over the adhesive, lining the edges of the paper with the edges of the letter first. Spray adhesive is a bit forgiving, so you do have a little time to lift the paper in case it isn't perfectly lined up on your first try. After you are happy with the position of the paper, lay everything on your table and press the chipboard firmly onto the paper. Set the letter aside and repeat the process with each letter. By the time you're finished with this process, the first letter should be dry & ready for trimming.

PART 3 - Trimming the Paper




Be sure to use your knife to cut out the paper covering the 3 holes in the end of each letter at this point.

Next, repeat the instructions in Class #2 for the back of each letter. Don't forget to remove the paper from the back sides of the 3 holes.

PART 4 - Painting the Edges


After you cut the excess paper from each letter, it's time to paint. Choose a paint color that runs through each page or one that coordinates with all of your papers. I use acrylic paint. I mix colors together to achieve the look I like. If you can't find a paint in a coordinating color, you might want to give mixing your own a try. If you aren't in to mixing, maybe black or brown would look nice with your paper, eliminating the extra step of mixing.
Instead of paint, you could use a small ink pad to ink the chipboard and paper edges. Personally, I like acrylic paint the best because an applicator sponge allows me to get into tight corners that an ink pad doesn't.
Once you have the paint you like, dip a paint applicator just barely into the paint. Touch the applicator to the edges of your letters, dragging it slowly along all the edges. I like a thin border of paint on the outside of my letters, so I just touch the applicator lightly along the edges. If you would like your border thicker, use a little more pressure when you drag your brush along the edges. After painting the edges, use the applicator along the inside edges of the letters with "holes" in them. (In this album, the P, A & R have inside edges)
Lay your letters on wax paper and wait for them to dry. Do be sure to look at both sides of the letter, so that you can be sure you have covered the chipboard edge up to the paper on both sides.
After the letters all dry, place the rings inside the holes and arrange your album. You can embellish the pages while the album is hooked together with the rings or take it apart for easier access.

PART 5 - Ribbon, Ribbon & More Ribbon


On of the things I love about the Bo Bunny My Word albums is that I can go crazy with one of my favorite embellishments....RIBBON! I like to squeeze in some ribbon where ever I can, in my projects. For this album, I chose lot's of white background ribbons with dots & words like...party, celebrate, birthday. I also picked some lime green shimmery ribbon, a red sheer ribbon with a swirl pattern and a medium blue rick-rack. I don't have too much rhyme or reason to how I pick the ribbons. I usually grab all the ribbons I can find in the store that are coordinate with my paper and make a pile of them on the counter on top of the paper. I try to pick a variety....pattern, solid, printed, shaped (like the rick-rack). I think a bit of everything mixed together looks great in a project like this.

I buy about a yard & a half of each ribbon for a project like this. Next, I cut the ribbon in 4 inch pieces. Since there are 3 rings, I cut three 4 inch pieces. I use the rest of the ribbon to tie on the letters and to decorate the inside of the album. Take your 4 inch pieces and tie them, one at a time, onto the rings. Being a type A person, I divide my ribbon so that each ring has a piece of each ribbon. You can do it however you like, really, one can have too much organization in her life! I just tie the ribbon around the ring once, so that there aren't too many big knots taking up room on the ring and I like the ribbon ends to be a bit longer.

For my PARTY book, I used 7 different ribbons. The number is up to you. If I found wider coordinating ribbons, I would probably only use 5 or so. I think it really depends on how many ribbons you find that you like. As far as ribbon goes, I'm not a "less is more" kind of girl!

PART 6 - Embellish it!


OK, now the fun part! Take all the papers & ribbons you have left, flowers, brads, and any of your favorite embellishments. It's nice to see everything at once, so you can decide what fits & matches with each page. I like to take ribbons & tie them around any edges I can. For this project, I tied ribbon around the A, R & Y. (NOTE: I liked the way the double sided paper showed through the holes in the P & R, so I left it this time & didn't cut it away when trimmed around all the other letters. Just check out everything before you trim to see if you might want to leave anything.) For this project, I used the Cricut at Whimzee's & its Alphalicious alphabet to cut out a name & some other shapes. I'm giving this one to my friend's daughter, Josie, for her 1st birthday, so I wanted to put her name & age on it. I stuck with the scraps of the papers I had already used for most of my inside pages, and I added a little coordinating cardstock. I also used a set of Fiskars clear stamps (a birthday set) and brown ink to add a little something to many of the inside pages. There were so many colors in these paper collections, that I thought brown would go with everything. And I wanted the ink to be subtle, something you might miss on first glance but would stand out after you took a few looks at the album.


So let's check out the pages:

Since this is a gift & I don't have photos, I took scraps from the project and cut shapes that I thought would work well as backgrounds for photos. I used a square & a circle on this page. You could put a photo in the circle or a little piece of memorabilia. I snipped a couple pieces of the party hat paper to use as decoration. Next, I layered two flowers together with a leaf and held them together with a small silver brad. Glue dots are the best way to adhere plastic items and ribbon to paper, so I used them throughout the book. I added a piece of ribbon, to the edge of the square photo, being careful to include the words "happy birthday" in my piece. I then closed the page and saw a little area of the A showing through and decided to put a little "make a wish" stamp in that space. For one last touch, I took a piece of dotted ribbon and wrapped it around the page, through the hole in the A, leaving the knot and long ends to show on the next page.

When I put the ribbon around the A, I used a large needle tool to poke two holes into the ribbon. I put one flower & brad in each hole and tied the knot in the ribbon. All that was left was to add a square photo background. I like to use the paper from the facing page to make a background. Since I already made sure the papers coordinated, it was easy to pick the facing paper for this page. And on this page it was extra easy...the paper on the back of the A is the back side of the paper on the front of the R. As far as embellishing the front of the R, I went a bit conservative here. Since the back of the A is pretty busy, I placed one background (see, it's the facing paper again) and a small piece of green ribbon on this page. I like being able to see some of the words on paper that has so many words. I did use another stamp with brown ink here. Near the top of the brown box, I stamped a group of balloons that peeks out when the book is closed.



On the next pages, I love these dot patterns and wanted them to stand more on their own. I used the back sides of the papers as photo backgrounds. On the left, I placed two pieces of ribbon under the background with the words "birthday" and "party" sticking out. For the right, I used one large photo background and one small square with a stamp and a plastic flower & silver brad in the corner. I like the look of all the dots in circular patterns covering these pages.


For these pages, I used two different photo backgrounds. On the left I chose the party hat paper and cut it about an inch larger than I originally thought I needed. I used the extra room to place two thin yellow paper pieces, stamped with birthday sayings, placing them on the left and bottom. I used two flowers and brads, one on each piece of paper in the extra space at the ends. For the right side, I used pink cardstock, cut a little long, with a stamp along the edge. For a little extra zing, I put three pieces of ribbon, folded in half under the side of the background with the edges sticking out. On this page, I used the pink dot paper to cut a large "1" & small "st" on the Cricut and adhered them so that they could be seen when the book was closed.


For the back of the album, I used a turquoise dotted piece as a background, cutting it extra long along the top. To give the impression of a gift, I tied a ribbon on the side of the paper with the knot at the top. Then I used a few last flowers, layered two on a brad, and arranged them in a triangle on the left side.

I was excited to finish the project and can't wait to have my friend unwrap it for her daughter and use it to showcase the photos from her first birthday. I love the Bo Bunny My Word Chipboard Albums. And I think that whoever receives them as a gift will cherish them as keepsakes for years to come!

Layout of the Week - Christmas Folding Mini Album

I've been busy this last week working on tons of different things for the store and trying to sneak in a few holiday projects. In between working on the email newsletter and trying to get the Pazzles cutter working, I created this cool little folding mini album. I'm teaching a workshop on this format on December 5th from 10am to 1pm, in case you're in the Portland area and want to learn to create these fun albums. The scrapbook store where I work is Whimzee's Scrapbook Studio, check out the blog I write for them, if you're looking for more scrapbook inspiration. I do occasionally post some of the same projects on both blogs, but I have created some step by step classes over there, so click on Classes in the list of labels.

OK, back to this project! Using 6 12 x 12 cardstock pieces, up to 14 different coordinating patterned papers (I used doubled sided sheets), a yard of ribbon and lot's of adhesive, these little albums go together quickly. I used a grassy green Bazzill cardstock and the Season's Greetings patterned papers from 3 Bugs in a Rug in my project. This album is a great way to finally use that little black blade that came with your Fiskars cutter! (That's a scoring blade!) Or you can use one of those cool new scoring boards. I saw one at the EK Success workshop last week, putting it on my Christmas list!

I used the Cricut at the store and the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge to create the little die cut holly for the album cover.

I plan to create a couple more of these albums to display during the workshop. These would be great to make to commemorate a special vacation or birthday!

Layout of the Week - Wedding Invitations

Yes, I know this isn't a scrapbook layout & I promise to get back to layouts next week. I've just had these invitations on my project list for quite a while. These invitations are for my brother & future sister-in-law's wedding in September. A few years ago, I tried having my own company creating handmade invitations & baby announcements. I have made quite a few over the years, but found that there was no way I could get paid enough for the time I was putting into them. So now, I create them by request for family and friends. In case you'd like to try your hand at creating your own invitations for your next small party or large event, I'll let you know how I created them. My brother needed 80 invitations and let me know that their colors are a sage or avocado green, copper & ivory. So that's where I started.

I usually create invitations by cutting each layer of paper on my large (12 x 12) Fiskars rotary blade cutter. Cutting each of the two or three layers of paper, one piece at a time. This time, I was in a time crunch and was excited to learn that Paper Zone (a cool paper store in my area) had pre-cut cardstock in tons of colors and sizes. Just by chance, they had EXACTLY the color I was looking for. They call it Wasabi, it's in their PZ Facets collection. So I purchased 4 packs of 20 sheets, in the A-7 or 5 1/8" x 7 1/8" size) to use as the backing sheet.

Next, I chose a copper metallic paper for the middle layer. I wanted a 1/4" border around all sides, so I cut the sheets of 8 1/2" x 11" paper down to two 4 1/2" x 6 1/2" pieces.

For the vellum topper, I chose ivory vellum from World Win. This vellum works very well in ink jet printers, which allowed me to choose colored ink to match the copper theme. I set my invitations up in Microsoft Publisher, I'd rather use Adobe Pagemaker, but don't have access to it on my current computer. My brother & his fiancee chose Vivaldi as their font. I was able to use the Pantone color chart available in Publisher to chose the exact ink color I was looking for. (It's 153CVC, in case you were wondering.) I cut the vellum into 4" x 6" pieces. I used page set up to choose a "portrait" setting and so I could put two sets of wording at the top and one sideways under them. This way I was able to cut three vellum toppers out of each 8 1/2" x 11" sheet, thereby saving a few sheets of paper and a little bit of money. The vellum would sit on top of the Wasabi paper & copper paper, with a 1/4" border around it.

After sorting the three layers into individual invitations, I used a Memory Makers Paper Piercing Tool to poke small holes approximately 1/4" from the top & sides on the left and right sides of the vellum. (I use my paper piercing tool on top of a self-healing mat.) I then placed small copper brads from American Crafts into each hole.

For a final touch, I used spray adhesive from Loctite to mount small copper skeleton leaves from Mountain Valley Paper Company at the bottom of the invitations. The wedding has a Fall leaf theme and I thought these leaves would be a fun addition.

The invitations will be mailed in matching Wasabi envelopes from Paper Zone, in the A-7 or 5 1/8" x 7 1/8" size.

The approximate cost for the supplies to create 80 of these invitations is $120.00

I'm happy with the way these invitations turned out and thankful to be done with such a large project. I probably wouldn't recommend a wedding as the project to tackle the first time you try creating your own invitations, but you should definitely try creating some for your or your child's next birthday party! People always love receiving something handmade in the mail. I've had many comments over the years from customers & friends, that they are keeping my invitations as mementos of a joyous event.

So, don't be afraid to try creating your own invitations! And remember, you can always ask me any questions you have while working on your project. I've run into all sorts of dilemmas in my projects and would be happy to share my solutions with you!

Layout of the Week Valentine Party Invitation

Hi there! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! I promise to post a photo of our cupcake-covered boy soon! He had a great birthday, thanks for all the good wishes!

I'm busy working on some invitation for the scrapbook store today. Here's a photo. This one was my sample. I did end up making the type bold so it was easier to see on the final invites. I just thought you might want to use it as inspiration for a Valentine card or two. The background paper is from LUXE's Trinket collection. I chose 4 different papers from this collection and made invites from each one. I think it's fine to use a variety of paper for your invites. Don't worry about them not all being the same. The recipients usually don't compare their invites anyway, but even if they did, I think they'd love the variety. And using a few different papers keeps it interesting for those of us doing the creating. I tend to get bored making 50 of the exact same invites.

Here are the details, if you want to copy them. The background paper is 4" x 5 1/4". I mounted a 4" x 1" black strip to the background paper with glue stick. I did lay the vellum next to each sheet before gluing the strip down, just to be sure I was adhering it in the correct spot. The vellum overlay is cut 3 3/4" x 5". I used Microsoft Publisher to design the vellum overlay. I created the overlays on an 8 1/2" x 11" page. I created a text box 3 3/4" x 5" with margins of 1/4" in the box. I centered the text both vertically & horizontally and used the font Gaston (the extended version). I thought Gaston looked great with the black lines of the Trinket papers. I copied and pasted the text box three times, so I had a total of four boxes on my page. I printed the pages on my ink jet printer. I cut all my papers on a large Fiskars rotary blade cutter. It makes a nice clean cut without the "fuzzy" edges you can get from smaller cutters.

I laid my vellum on top of my background paper with black strip attached. I placed 2 1/2" pieces of dark pink ribbon and black sparkly ribbon over the hole. Next, I used a Making Memories paper piercing tool to create a hole directly in the center of the black strip. For the final touch, I placed a heart shaped brad in the hole. I loved the shape of some bronze brads I found in the bulk embellishment section of the store. But the color wasn't my favorite, so I took a cardboard box and pushed all the brads I needed into it in rows. Then I sprayed them all black with a satin finish black spray paint. For just a little extra effort, I had perfectly matching embellishments.

To hold everything in place, I used a couple of mini-glue dots under the vellum. I didn't want my vellum & ribbon to spin around the brad.

I used black envelopes for these invites. A silver pen was perfect for writing the recipients' names and return address.

I hope you try this technique for creating your next invitations. It's a simple, cost-effective way to create something very personal for your friends & family. Stop by your local scrapbook store to find the perfect papers, ribbon and any advice you need. If you're in the Portland area, stop by Whimzee's Scrapbook Studio, we'd love to help you find everything you need for your next event. Check out our blog for more creative ideas.