Hello readers! Practical Scrapper Kelly Jean here with you today for my first individual post. Since Halloween is on Thursday, I thought it would be super fun to share with you a few pages from my This is Halloween mini album. I so love mini albums, especially ones that are small and chunky. They are perfect for housing all of your sweet memories! (Fun fact: When I first applied for the Practical Scrappers Design Team, I submitted one of my favorite mini albums. And made it!)
The cover of my mini album is made from a scrap of cardboard box that I cut down to 5x5. I'm always saving pieces of scraps to use, especially since I saved all my pennies to buy a Cinch from WeRMemory Keepers. I love that you can use it to bind anything really! This makes it nice when you want to stray away from the normal chipboard albums.
Most of my album was created from various scraps of Halloween paper and collections that I had. These included BoBunny's Whooligans collection and lots of little tidbits that I received in swaps. I collected all of my papers and tags, put them in the order I wanted them, and then bound them with my Cinch. Then comes the fun part of adding photos and embellishing!
My album features photos from several years of Halloween. Since my hubby and I aren't big Halloween people, we don't have tons and tons of photos. But, having a collection of several years' photos really helped me fill my album. The second photo above is pumpkins my hubby and I carved several years ago. We are avid Chicago Blackhawks (hockey) fans and my hubby insisted on carving the Blackhawks head into his pumpkin.
My sister and I have always loved the Halloween decorations at my grandparents' house, ever since we were little. The two photos above feature decorations from their house. We both found it funny that my Grandpa hung the little skeletons as it really isn't "their type" of decorations.
In addition to the Whooligans collection, I also loved the Halloween borders from Martha Stewart crafts. The little pumpkin people above are from one of the borders. Aren't they the cutest!? Most of the die cuts featured in my album were cut from my Slice (Spooky Alley cartridge). It has the cutest little pumpkins and sentiments.
I love having different-sized layers in my mini albums. The less formed, the better. I cut the tag above from my Slice and also the little pumpkin. Adding this little tag helped break up the pages and add a little journaling.
My mini album is only half done. I plan on adding some photos from this year's fall and Halloween. Most of my mini albums feature small photos. A trick I learned a while ago is to print your photos in a collage (in either 4x6 or 5x7 size), then cut down the photos individually. This technique is especially great to use if you don't have your own at-home photo printer.
The remainder of my mini album is blank to fill in with photos from this year's Halloween adventures. There are about five more pages in the album to complete. Creating already-made mini albums are always the best and save on time and energy. They're all ready to go with your memories!
I hope I inspired you to create your own Halloween memories, and to think outside the box when it comes to album design. Happy Halloween!
xoxo,
Kelly Jean
